Successful Soil Delivery for Raised Garden Beds?

I’m looking to build large raised garden beds in the backyard of my townhouse, and am having difficulty finding a place to provide bulk soil at a reasonable price. I’m looking at needing about 5 cubic yards of soil, which is no small undertaking. (I know there are strong proponents of just using the backyard soil, we’ve already decided we don’t want to do that on our property for multiple reasons.)

The only access to the backyard is through the basement and our front patio area is fenced in so we can’t have a truck just dump it on the front stoop. We’re fine with moving stuff ourselves a piece at a time with a dolly, but any place I find only delivers the “dump truck” style or tells me I need to buy a pallet or more of bags at $5-$10 a bag, plus delivery — which adds up very quickly for 200 bags!

Has anyone tackled this problem successfully? I’m sure we can’t be the first ones to deal with this dilemma!

Guest User | 7 years ago

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chemosphere | 7 years ago

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Are you sure you want 5 cubic yards? That’s a lot of dirt. We had 60 cubic feet delivered (a little over 2 cubic yards). 3 raised beds, 20 cubic feet each. You can grow a huge amount of vegetables in this much dirt. 5 cubic yards is 135 cubic feet, right? Each bag is 1 cubic foot and weighs about 40 lbs.
We had 60 bags delivered curbside. Me and a buddy brought them in the house and through the basement. Took an hour or so. The good thing about bags is you can do it in stages – leave a bunch in the basement if you want, or even next to the stoop. You could do 10 bags a day for a week and save your back. Also had 30 bags of mulch delivered and just did it myself.

yudashasom | 7 years ago

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are you the original stargazer?

lots of crazy people replacing soil. the dirt will be “contaminated” within days by your neighbors. save your money and energy.

randolph | 7 years ago

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> @nyc_sport
> I assume you could get it dumped in the street on a no parking day/time
I have a neighbor with some cones who could block off a spot for your pile of dirt.

nyc_sport | 7 years ago

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5 cubic yards is a modest sized dump truck. A full-sized pickup bed would hold about half that. If you get a bulk delivery, you are going to need to bag it to get through the house. I assume you could get it dumped in the street on a no parking day/time but you are going to need substantial help on hand to get that through the house. You might rent/borrow a pick up yourself and make a few trips to the nursery to get it filled?

randolph | 7 years ago

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get the 200 bags and then get some day laborers from the home depot parking lot to carry it to the back yard for you.