Buying compost in bulk can save you loads of money
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Cottage tales | 24 comments
Photo: Soil (copyriight Harrod Horticulture)
Every day, when it’s not raining or freezing, I spend an hour digging in the garden. Depending on how spritely I feel, I can usually dig a square metre. It is mind numbingly slow. Thank goodeness for my DAB sports radio which I bought to stop myself going mad when I was painting 38 Georgian windows and doors, inside and out. Four coats of paint outside three coats inside. Do the math!
The reason why the digging is taking so long is that many years ago a number of pig stys and outhouses were obviously bulldozed, covered with a layer of topsoil and laid to grass. This has led to a very bumpy lawn and a stone problem in the herbaceous garden.
Each square metre fills a builder’s barrow with bricks tiles and large chunks of flint. Don’t ask me what I’m going to do with the mountain of rubble! I have no master plan as yet. The soil is full of gravel. Any piece under 5 cm is allowed to stay – otherwise I could be riddling for years.
I’m hoping to excavate 25 square meters so I’ve been looking into ways of replacing the rubble with topsoil or compost. At the moment, the extended border is much lower than the lawn. I want pretty, plumped up, borders filled with flowers for the gate side stand.
I’ve discovered that if you buy topsoil or compost in bulk it is much, much cheaper than buying the bags from the garden centre. I was astonished by the difference in price of online suppliers – the cheapest that I’ve found is from Compost Direct – coming in at £50 for 750 litres and £58 for 1000 of their top black gold compost. Elsewhere I’ve seen both of these being offered for twice or three times the price.
If we buy this compost and top soil we can also make our own grow bags. I’m planning to buy some heavy duty refuse sacks to make deep and chunky grow bags for tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and cucurbits. These can sit in our sunny front garden and won’t dry out as quickly as the standard grow bags. Last Spring I was attracted by the chubby grow bags for sale in Homebase – but at £5 for a 50 litre bag, the price put me off.
We have to bulk up our extended herbaceous borders. But part of me is holding back.
I have some clients who bought a load of cheap compost and it was full of seeds that germinated and were a nightmare. Should I go to a top soil supplier in the UK – Harrod Horticulture has teamed up with Rowlawns and is cheaper than Rowlawns – or should I go the budget route which might be absolutely fine?
What do you think? I really need some sound advice please.
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im about to go the same route and im planning to ask if soil is sterilised im almost sure its supposed to be also im buying it from stamco our local builders merchant who have a good reputation and ive heard no complaints about.Iwill be putting mine on new raised beds and will go with mulching so im hoping if there are any stray seeds they can come through
Have you tried Maddingley Mulch? They have a range of products including black fen soil and deliver free in the local area. We have just filled our new raised beds with gorgeous looking fen soil.
Remember Fiona, you get what you pay for, don`t go the budget route
I was going to suggest covering the soil too if you want to keep the weeds down. Since it is for flower borders then maybe you could use the black stuff (the name eludes me at the moment) that you can plant through and yet lets the water through.
Hi Fiona,
I’ve had more success when I get a mix made up rather than using pure compost. Get some good quality topsoil mixed in with the compost and also some fine gravel…keeps things airy and free draining, pure compost or ‘garden mix’ can often be too lightweight, resulting in a bog in the winter and a dustbowl in the summer. Good luck!
Fiona:
You are wise to be concerned about importing weed seeds into your garden! You can ask the soil supplier for a planting flat of the soil and take it home and see how many weeds sprout before buying a tuck load. They could have a different batch of soil by the time you were done with the test, so it’s not a sure thing.
Once you have the new planting beds prepared, I recommend covering the bare soil with a few sheets of newspaper weighted down with mulch. When you are ready to plant, you can tear a little hole in the paper and plant right through it; this really reduces the number of weed seeds that germinate.
Happy flower growing!
Sarah
its a long shot but if you are registered with freecycle why not put an ad for anyone digging out for foundations or patios etc you could ask for their topsoil in exchange for your pile of ‘hard core’ for their base…. you never know swap what you got for what you want, you never know if a proffessional gardener or builder is interested they will deliver your soil and take away your rubble.
we got ours loose by the ton (you need someone with an agricultural trailer) from our local council
http://www.recycleforwiltshire.com/faqs.html
it was dirt cheap, ha ha.
Scroll down for details, I’m sure all councils do something similar.
Can’t comment on topsoil quality but when you make up your own growbags try the ring culture method for tomatoes done the cheap way. If you can, pick up some flower buckets from the supermarket, cut out the bottom. Push them into the soil in the bag where you are going to plant your tomato, top up with compost. Plant your tomato in the pot, you can now water and feed into the pot and the compost will dry out far more slowly and the roots have more room to spread. My Father used this method into the soil in the greenhouse borders many years ago and he was a commercial grower.
Try your local builders’ merchant for soil prices, with a local company you may well be able to go and stick your hands in the stuff to check it before delivery.
I’ve just paid £35 plus VAT (delivered price) for 1000 litre bags of bark chips (nice small stuff, not the huge chunky bits) which compares extremely well to the price listed on the compostdirect.com site and I know they sell soil also, so maybe your local suppliers do.
BTW, did you notice the Harrod Hort. prices vary depending upon where you are?