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Hiya *waves*
As this is my first post...I'm Nikki, mum of 4 young girls and American ex pat living in Scotland. A few years back, I grew a small container garden and had fairly good luck with that and caught the veg growing bug! Sadly (and joyfully), I then gave birth to my youngest children, my identical twin girls and then there was no time for even thinking, much less growing! They are now coming up on 3 years old and I am finding that I have once again, the necessary time to give to vegetables. Add that to the fact that I recently quit smoking, and my life is in desperate need of a new (healthy, productive) addiction!
So...my question. I'm installing a greenhouse and 2 2m x 6m raised beds (ground soil is almost entirely clay that feels as if you could throw a pot with and construction materials far too large for me to try and turn....at least they threw grass on top, right?! I'm trying to find the cheapest option for filling my raised beds and have found a top soil that says it's a mix of top soil and soil conditioner (the blurb also says something about compost in the soil). Can I use something like this alone or do I need to treat it as a plain top soil and mix in compost and manure? I am pretty good at figuring things out for myself but this has got me properly confused!
Also, it doesn't seem as if my council has any sort of public compost and I really have no access to anything that's free that I know of...I am going to start a compost bin this year, but as I said, I am going full out, going from nothing but a mud-hell garden (being fixed this week) to everything, so I really just need to get everything up and running suitably and then improve in coming years.
Any advice is greatly appreciated! I know I'm late in the game, that I should've started this before last winter...at least I have many of my seeds already germinating inside, ready for transplant into the greenhouse or beds (other than the things that need sown directly of course).
Sorry for the waffle....I tend to do that - kill people with information *blush*
As this is my first post...I'm Nikki, mum of 4 young girls and American ex pat living in Scotland. A few years back, I grew a small container garden and had fairly good luck with that and caught the veg growing bug! Sadly (and joyfully), I then gave birth to my youngest children, my identical twin girls and then there was no time for even thinking, much less growing! They are now coming up on 3 years old and I am finding that I have once again, the necessary time to give to vegetables. Add that to the fact that I recently quit smoking, and my life is in desperate need of a new (healthy, productive) addiction!
So...my question. I'm installing a greenhouse and 2 2m x 6m raised beds (ground soil is almost entirely clay that feels as if you could throw a pot with and construction materials far too large for me to try and turn....at least they threw grass on top, right?! I'm trying to find the cheapest option for filling my raised beds and have found a top soil that says it's a mix of top soil and soil conditioner (the blurb also says something about compost in the soil). Can I use something like this alone or do I need to treat it as a plain top soil and mix in compost and manure? I am pretty good at figuring things out for myself but this has got me properly confused!
Also, it doesn't seem as if my council has any sort of public compost and I really have no access to anything that's free that I know of...I am going to start a compost bin this year, but as I said, I am going full out, going from nothing but a mud-hell garden (being fixed this week) to everything, so I really just need to get everything up and running suitably and then improve in coming years.
Any advice is greatly appreciated! I know I'm late in the game, that I should've started this before last winter...at least I have many of my seeds already germinating inside, ready for transplant into the greenhouse or beds (other than the things that need sown directly of course).
Sorry for the waffle....I tend to do that - kill people with information *blush*
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