need some topsoil

gasbill

Hello, I hope someone can help me - not sure if I've got this right or not. I need 3 cubic metres of topsoil for my garden. Have been to local garden centre who do 0.6 cubic metre bags of clean screened topsoil for £40 each, so I need 5 bags, which is £200 + VAT = £235 total.

Been to another local garden centre, and they do 100 litre bags of all purpose compost for £4.00 each. So I need 30 bags (30 X 100 litres = 3000 litres) Which comes to £120. Now this sounds too good to be true - I would have thought buying 30 small bags would be an awful lot more expensive than buying in bulk. But when I work it out like this, it is half the price.

Two things worry me - Have I got the maths right? Always was a bit useless at that....And can I use all purpose compost, or do I need actual topsoil ie. is there a difference? Not sure about nutrients and stuff like that. I need to fill a fairly big area to about 15cm deep.

Hope someone out there can shed some light....Many thanks in advance.

irnbru_2

gasbill wrote: »

Hope someone out there can shed some light....Many thanks in advance.

Is your garden 5m * 4m ?

Are you growing anything in the soil?

B&Q had 25% off their composts.

gasbill

Thank you - yes - the hole I need to fill is roughly 4 x 5 metres - removed a slab of concrete, and there's horrible rubbly clay-ey hard core underneath it, so I figured I'd need something on top of it in order for anything to grow....Was planning on having some lawn, and some herbaceous border. Is 15 cm deep enough to grow grass/border? That's how much I need to fill it to bring it up to other level....

ChasingButterflies

If you phone up a builders merchants they should be able to double check what quantity of topsoil you need. Our local BM is really helpful - they sell bulk bags of topsoil, bark etc. The are national companies i.e. Jewson who do the same - however I have just about always found local companies to be cheaper - but ring round - they will all generally price-match.

Remeber to get quotes for any delivery charges too. As you are dealing with BM their prices will exclude VAT.

irnbru_2

gasbill wrote: »

Is 15 cm deep enough to grow grass/border?

I would think that's fine for grass, given you'll be rolling it flat or turfing it.

For the border, I would dig down an additional 15cm and backfill that with compost, then add the soil.

Will drainage be an issue if it's all sitting on clay?

gasbill

Well, I'm more worried about it being too free draining - it's a south west facing slope, and normally dries out very quickly. Well, it's wet as right now.... Maybe I'll dig out a bit more where the border is going to be....

scbk

Check in the local rag/supermarket ads people always seem to have have topsoil for sale. Maybe even ask on freecycle!

Just make sure you rake out the stones once it's down. Too many cowboys will just dump soil down then throw grass seed on top, which makes it "fun" when you eventually go to cut it!

peter_the_piper

Avoid compost if you can as its too light for using as the base for a lawn. What would be best is Sterilised Loam as the normal topsoil still has all the weed seeds and roots that were around when it was scooped up. Sterilised loam is more expensive but will save a lot of weeding later on.

BlondeHeadOn

Check on Ebay, they usually have lots of ads for topsoil free to collect - with luck there will be one for your area!

antbann

know anywhre in notts that i can get some soil from my gardens bumpy just need to fill it in if you let me know thanks:beer: