I started off this year with an experiment of 2 identical raised beds. In one, I moved in garden soil from an established raised bed, and in the other, I filled with brand new soil mix from Living Earth. I planted 2 different varieties of onion on 2/2 and planted carrots, radish, lettuce, and beets on 2/6. We had pretty bad freezing weather for multiple days that killed a lot of the seedlings and about half of the onions. You can see in the picture how much better the oil soil performs. The new soil has a lot of wood bark in it, and that wood is tying up all the nitrogen while decomposing. I’ve added blood meal to help, but you can see what a difference in growth is between the two.

With the help from a den of Cub Scouts, we set up 3 new raised beds.  They are 4′ x 4′ and made out of treated 2×12 lumber.  I filled them with planting mix from Texas Pure, which contains 50% compost, 25% sand and 25% top soil/loam.