Filling an Accessible Garden Box

So now that my garden box has been built and placed in the yard where it’s easily accessible (aka, a relatively flat spot in the yard where I’m less likely to get stuck), it was time to fill the sucker.

 

Wait . . . HOW much dirt will this hold?

Holy crap, did I underestimate how much soil we’d need to fill this bad boy.

 

We decided to use top soil to fill the planter, because of costs and the fact that we had already purchased garden “food” since elevated gardens need extra nutrients anyway since the plants’ roots aren’t near the rest of the ground. The downside of using top soil is that it’s measured in pounds, where potting soil is measured in cubic feet . . . so figuring out how much soil you need is a little trickier.

To fill the 6’x2’x2′ box, we ended up using about 22 bags of top soil.

That’s 880lbs of dirt that I conned Ben into hauling around for me. Good thing he likes me.

Three trips, hundreds of pounds of dirt loaded in the back of the van, and one less-than-thrilled husband later, we were ready to plant.

What the heck can you plant in a raised garden bed? 

Before we even bought the lumber for the raised garden bed, I had a date night with Google to figure out what plants thrive in containers. Tomatoes, certain types of carrots, peas, potatoes, lettuce, and herbs were among the most highly recommended. I decided to try a mix of things, including tomatoes, bell peppers, lettuce, garden peas, spaghetti squash, carrots, and lettuce.

 

What are you planting this year?