What do you fill a completely empty raised bed with?

[CatM1nt]

Tia

From experience, it depends upon the aspect and how exposed it is.
Could you poss post a pic? How much cash have you got? Are you talking Monty Don levels or the poorly plants section at Morrisons?

Edible or non-edible?

What I was told to do is this:

3 statement evergreen shrubs that add height and bulk - these should fill out and look good in the winter when everything else has gone to crap.
Bulbs - loads of bulbs. Stick them in during November.
Seasonal bedding - do this over Easter and then water, water, water. It's actually really fun! If I'd had my chance again, I'd have gone for photinia (sp?) and perhaps some kind of hardy geranium just because it spreads so fast. Not sure if they would look nice together, mind.

If it is a sunny position then herbs. Loads of garden centres have reduced them now.

I’m assuming you mean the container is empty and you want to know what to fill the bottom with rather than bags and bags of compost?
In which case I’d go for a load of stones for drainage, bigger on the bottom, smaller on the top.

We filled a deep raised bed with lots of logs and chopped branches from where we lowered the height of a hedge. Then we put homemade compost on top.

It’s veg 1.8 mx0.9

Wood that will decay in the bottom. Acts as a sponge to release water slowly. Then leaves and hedge trimmings. Then Mel's mix on top.

Google Mel's mix. It's a square foot gardening mix of compost, potting compost and vermiculite (?) that gives really good yield.

We put stones, wood chip, horse manure then topsoil from Travis Perkins in ours.

You can get bulk bags of different types of soils delivered depending on what you are planting.

I had a pallet of Ericaceous compost delivered when I did a raised bed full of blueberry bushes.

@byvirtue how are your blueberries doing? My kids get through punnets of them so I often think about planting some.

@Lou573 I bought 2 year old plants and they are now in their second year with us. Patriot and Duke are doing really well and would recommend those. They are much better this year than last year. We haven’t bought any blueberries for about a month now!

They do need netting off from the birds although we have a cheeky blackbird who is a pro at picking them through the netting. She’s cute (and brazen) so I’m happy to share!

If you're planning to grow veg have a look at Huw Richard's book 'Veg in one bed'. It gives a month by one guide of what to plant and tend each month, starting in March. I'm following it for one of my beds and so far this year have had potatoes, broad beans, lettuce, radish and currently have leeks, kale, purple sprouting broccoli, chard, beetroot, runner beans and dwarf beans, and I've just planted turnips, kohl rabi and pak choi. I have carrots still to plant and some more salad leaves/mustard during August. My bed is bigger but not huge, so there's enough space for quite a variety if you go for succession planting.

My beds were made last year when I had the garden landscaped. The base is hard core and the landscapers put bags of compost in. However, I've since added topsoil as I found the compost wasn't substantial enough, and have continued to add a couple of bags of compost and some chicken manure pellets (for plants beyond seedling stage).