For those of you who are loyal followers of Montana Farm Life, you might remember the raised garden beds that I built over the winter in our barn. If you don’t remember or you are a new follower of Montana Farm Life, below is a picture of what I produced for our garden.

I built 3 of these to add to our existing one for our outdoor garden. Now that it is springtime in Bozeman, Montana we decided it was time to fill our garden beds with soil and prepare them for planting. If any of you have filled garden beds before, you know how expensive it can be to fill them up with the perfect blend of compost and soil. To help reduce the cost, but still adding to the value of the bed, we decided to break our blend into 3 parts. 1 part being straw hay, 1 part being organic compost, and one part raised garden bed soil. This provides the nutrients our plants will need, but reduces the cost of filling the bottom third with straw hay. Below are some pictures of our final product and please comment with your favorite blends for organic raised bed gardening.