Bulk buying of soil improver topsoil

might be worth asking a few more people on your plot, in case they know of any cheap suppliers or want to be included in the deal. Our site has a plot holder who is a landscape designer and people regularly club together to buy cheap top soil from him.

Before we got our allotment, we built a raised bed in the back garden and needed more soil to fill it. We ordered a 1 tonne bag of fruit and veg soil from a very well known soil provider through tescos, its available from lots of different shops though. It cost over £100! Twice my yearly allotment rent! Surprisingly it didnt go that far 9ftx5ftx1ft high, try and work it out as a volume rather that weight! But we were really disappointed with the quality of the soil, it was very clay-ey (is that a word?!) and not much better than the stuff in our garden, which is very very errr.. clay-ey!!! Not something I would ever do again, especially as I now have a mound of soil in the back garden and no where to put it!

If you can see/touch/smell what you are buying, and you are happy with it, then go for it. But I wouldnt go mail order, but thats just my opinion....

I made 7 raised beds in October last year and added municipal compost. brought it from the company my council send the garden waste to for recycling, it cost me £5.00 per tonne and they delivered. It's good stuff and a few people on my sight have now had some.

If your soil is clay-ey then firstly I'd add lots of organic stuff, secondly I'd add sand (personally I'd only add sharp sand, but opinions do differ as a trawl through previous posts will show). Sand will increase drainage, will be considerably cheaper than a premium topsoil mix, and once incorporated into your existing soil will make it closer to a true loam. You also know what you are getting. This is the route that I took. I dug the organic into the clay over winter and used the sand as a mulch (around peas/beans/squash/sweetcorn etc) and managed to get a 4 inch layer over the whole patch over 12 months. It's taken a further 2 years for it to be well and truely mixed into the soil, bu the soil is now nearly 5 inches deeper and the drainage is much better.