[member11809]

When you make a raised bed for plants not veg can you put old sods and garden stuff dug up to plant trees at the bottom? Do you also did out the surface under it?

[Sive]

I think it all depends on how deep a raised bed you are talking about. How many inches in depth are you planning to make it ?

[Greengage]

yes you can add sods to the base so long as you turn them upside down i.e green side down, I would fork over the base otherwise you could have a hard pan and poor drainage,.

[Good guy]

When I made mine last month, I did put some dug-up, weedy sods at the bottom (they are 12 inches or more deep). Then I covered everything with flattened out cardboard boxes and thick layers of newspaper, before filling with soil/compost mix. I expect any weed problem that develops will be from viable weed seed in my imperfectly made compost rather than from anything I buried!
Best of luck with it.

[davidk]

For the sake of a bit of digging I dug the bottom of mine before I filled them.

[tippben]

Good Guy's tip is a great one. A layer of wet cardboard/paper is an excellent biodegradeable light excluding membrane and physical barrier. I tend to soak it in seaweed feed, and use a bit of fish, blood and bone on top before filling the beds, to guard against the cardboard using up nitrogen as it rots. You can get perennial weeds that push through, but not many, and they are weak from pushing through the barrier, then all the soil/compost/manure in the bed, so far more easily dealt with.

For the first season, consider growing a green manure, to improve the fertility and structure of the soil, as regardless of your filling mix, you will be essentially building a healthy soil from scratch. Phacelia, Poached Egg Plant, Alfalfa, and Red Clover are all viable. You don't HAVE to do it, and you could do a "green manure rotation", where you sow it in unused spaces where you'd otherwise get weeds, then swap it to other places when you've harvested a crop. If you don't either have useful plants growing, or cover the soil with a permeable membrane, you'll get weeds. Potatoes are a useful crop for this purpose, but you'll have to hurry up getting them in, and don't expect a massive harvest!

[member11809]

it is for plants i want it not veg. i want to plant pricklybplants and have them raised so they will reach top of fence