How to Fill a Raised Garden Bed for Cheap! (Lasagna Gardening)

Ever wondered how much it costs to fill those huge raised garden beds? Not much! With the Lasagna Gardening method, you can fill even the largest of raised beds for cheap!

A backyard features two raised metal garden beds topped with trellises and filled with soil, ready for planting. A red toy wagon is propped vertically against a fence. A wooden fence and storage shed are visible in the background.

Recently, I did a backyard makeover to build my dream garden in my little backyard in my new-ish build home (we purchased our home in 2020). I purchased 3 raised garden beds, 1 4 x 8 ft bed and 2 2 x 4 ft beds.

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Steps to Fill a Raised Garden Bed (Lasagna Gardening Technique):
Interested in creating a small dream garden in your backyard? I've got you!

I was stressing over how to fill them without spending a fortune and came across an article on Lasagna Gardening on The Spruce. After reading, I was motivated and ready to get moving on filling my beds in prep for the growing season!

Watch the video I made doing it here!

Steps to Fill a Raised Garden Bed (Lasagna Gardening Technique):

Brown Layers:

1 - Cardboard

You know you have some Amazon boxes laying around! A layer of cardboard will act as a weed barrier, but the cardboard will breakdown as the weed paper will not.

A metal framed raised garden bed under construction in a yard. The interior base is lined with cardboard. Firewood is stacked to the left, and the ground is dry with some vegetation in the background.

2 - Dried Wood

I got some dried firewood from my local farmers stand. I needed about 2 stacks, or about 60 18 in. pieces of fire wood, to fill my 3 beds. Wood is a great resource for constant organic nutrition for your garden beds. They will take years break down, continuously feeding the soil, and this layer is what will give you the height you need so you aren't bending all the way over into your beds while planting!

A person wearing gloves loads chopped firewood into a trailer. The trailer is filled with logs of various sizes and bark textures. The setting appears to be outdoors on a sunny day.

3 - Dried Sticks and Yard Clippings

No need to get fancy here, dried sticks and yard clippings will work here. This is more dried organic material that will break down over time and create great nutrients for your soil. I used some dried sticks from a boxwood shrub that I dug up in our front yard.

A person wearing green gloves places branches and dry leaves over a layer of firewood in a metal cart. Another cart filled with firewood is visible in the background. The scene is outdoors on a sunny day.

4 - Straw or Grass Clippings (optional, see note)

This step is optional, straw, hay, or grass clippings. I added dried grass clippings (mostly because we had a ton of them), to help create a dense barrier within the brown layer to help retain a lot of moisture. I live in Texas, so finding ways to preserve as much water as possible was necessary for me.

BUT, I am prepared for the possibility of a few weeds poking through the surface from time to time because of this. I'll let you know how that turns out. It's not a guarantee, but a possibility none the less.

A person is arranging straw and logs in a metal bed, possibly preparing a garden area. They are wearing green gardening gloves and working under bright sunlight. A red wagon with firewood is visible in the background.

Green Layer

4 - Green yard clippings and leaves

Adding green vegetation to your raised beds will help supply nitrogen in the soil, this is necessary for healthy plant growth! Add yard clippings, semi dried leaves that are still green, and perhaps plant trimmings. (I added the green leaves from the boxwood that I dug up.)

A metal trailer bed filled with dry straw and green plant clippings. In the background, a red wagon and a wooden fence are partially visible. The clippings are scattered across the straw, indicating recent yard work.

5 - Compost, compost, compost!

Possibly the most important ingredient for raised bed success, a great compost! if you don't create your own compost at home, this is a great option for organic raised garden beds.

I'll be purchasing an in home composting system for use this year, as we tend to have a lot of food scraps (since we are an ingredient forward household). But purchasing compost or manure from the nursery or garden store is perfectly fine as well.

When you're looking for organic compost, you want to avoid mixes that are overly rocky or full of pebbles and scraps. It should be brown, be crumbly, have an earthy smell, and be free of pebbles, rocks, plastic, or metal scraps.

6 - Organic Top Soil

Raised Bed Soil, specifically, is recommended for use in raised beds over potting or garden soil. Raised bed soil contains a higher level of nutrients and moisture holding components than that of potting or top soil. I love this brand.

Bags of HAPI GRO Organic Raised Bed Planting Mix are laid out in a row on top of a garden bed filled with soil. The bags feature colorful labels with images of tomatoes and fresh produce.

And that's it, you're ready to plant!

I added some pretty tomato cages to help support my heirloom tomatoes, squash, and zucchini that I've placed along the center of my garden bed. (In hindsight, I would have placed these towers before I filled the beds in. It would have been much easier to make them stable this way. I ended up having to pull out quite a few pieces of wood in the process of getting them in.)

I hope you learned a little something about Lasagna Gardening! If you enjoyed this post, I encourage you to leave a comment! (That is so helpful for my site!) If you try this out yourself, I'd love to hear about your experience! Snap a photo and tag me on Instagram (@atoastedcrumb) so I can repost it to stories!