I can't answer your questions but if you are adding the black cow manure I don't think you need to add the compost too. I'd say add one or the other.

As to your other questions, a few thoughts:
Its a matter of how you are going to haul this stuff to the beds?
If you get all bagged products it might be easier than getting a load of dirt dropped off and then moving it all with a wheelbarrow or wagon.
It also depends on who is doing it and what condition they're in. Are they going to hurt themselves doing this labor and need medical care afterwards? :)

A load dropped off at my house would mean I'd have to hire someone to do the hauling and spreading for me. Earlier this year I had a huge load of compost delivered. It took 3 guys 4-5 hours to get it spread.

Also getting the bagged stuff you can spread out the cost over time.. doing one bed or area at a time and not over work yourself or spend all the money at one time. You can spread it out over a few pay checks.

Another thought is that this is our rainy season. A load dropped off now may coincide with bad weather and have to sit a while--wet and heavy. Bagged products won't get washed away and won't get water logged (tarp them) if you can't get to work on the project immediately.

I save the empty bags and use them for bagging up weeds through out the year or to store some of my own compost when I break down a compost bin.

I hope someone can help you figure it out the math. I'm not help when it comes to numbers.

Thanks so much!

That's exactly what I was thinking, too. There are three beds that wrap around the house, and some need more work than others. There are still some plants and shrubs in all of them.

My plan was to work on one bed at a time (at least for the soil), and spread the work out over several weeks. It's just DH and I doing the work, and while we're in pretty good shape, we're not as young as we used to be. It seems to me that if we have a truckload brought in all at once, any money we saved would be spend on either paying someone to help, or the sweat equity of doing it ourselves. I don't want to have to play beat the clock with the weather.

If you decide to go the bulk route, don't get the LIT specialty soil with expanded shale -- I think they're now calling it Clay Buster. My beds were FILLED with corn-type weeds after I got a bulk order of this. I've used regular compost from them before and was satisfied, except for once when it was way too fresh - neighbors didn't care for the smell. Now when I need something extra, I just use the bagged Black Kow, alfalfa, and sometimes soybean meal or cottonseed compost. This works for me.

I don't remember the prices of bulk vs bagged for comparison. I've done it both ways. I think it just depends on whether you have someone ready and able to spread the stuff right away once it's dumped, as Melvalena said. I have had to resort to covering the whole thing with a HUGE tarp (in my driveway) when rain came to quickly. In the end, everything worked out, but now I prefer the bagged ammendments. Lou

check stables in your area, you can probably get all the manure you want free, probably composted too. I get mulch from the city and use it for everything, including potting plants and filling up beds, it breaks down quickly to a great rich black soil. And it's free, yeah, I gotta haul it and load it. I've found it works better than any soil or potting mix I've bought over the years.

We filled the area along the fence with bags of clipping & leaves we picked up around town. I planted directly into the mulch/leaves/grass clippings and everything took off. So we made raised beds for free and the stuff didn't take anytime to break down into great soil.
Tally HO!

I have a friend who kept a few cattle just to get an agricultural tax classification. He heaped up the manure and, when he thought it had "cured" sufficiently, worked it into his large veggie garden. He couldn't keep tomato plants alive for years afterwards. He sent a soil sample to A&M, and they told him the manure had introduced some sort of destructive micro-organism into the soil. Hard to get rid of.

Any manure needs to be composted, not just aged. I do bulk and the place that I buy bulk also lets me load my own bags. I save a lot that way and then I can "design" my soil. They have all sorts of additives sold bulk. Not expanded shale. But decomposed granite and "revita;izer mulch" that is great for clay.

Well, you need just 30 cubic feet? That is basically 1 yard of material(1 yard = 27cf). A yard of custom soil will cost between 25-40 bucks. A yard will also easily fit into a pickup bed. All the other posters raised valid points. Moving the materials, weather and all that stuff definitely applies. Since most bags of material come in 2 cubic foot increments, you can expect to need about 15 bags or so of material. It might cost you 40-50bucks, but it is easier to handle. If you need the bulk materials delivered to your place, the delivery will usually cost 75-100 bucks, so only get it delivered when you are getting large quantities, such as 5+ yards.

Thanks so much!

I thought about all of the pros and cons, and went ahead and started buying the bagged stuff. So far I have 4 bags of landscape mix, and 3 bags each of expanded shale and manure. We have a new composter, so I'll add in the compost whenever the manure runs out.

I'm just going to work on one bed at a time, and see how it goes. I'm already tired!

my experince with cow manure is that every weed that the cows ate will come up in your garden/flower bed. i about never got read of the weeds that came up in my garden.

If you have weeds you don`t have enough plants. Or no chickens.
Just my gardening philosphy LOL!
I find weeds, pull weeds and plant something in the spot the weeds were growing. I haven`t weeded some parts of the garden for years, no way for the weeds to get a foothold. The chickens are doing a wonderful job of weeding the backyard, now if they would quit eating the roses....
Tally HO!

Ditto on living earth technology. Had eight cubic yards delivered this spring, altho some pieces of the finer grade of mulch had pieces the size of my arm! But I'll be back!

I wd like to know the best bagged soil to buy fr container gardening. I cannot afford miracle gro an was wondering what yall wd use. I grow in containers bc of my arthritis an bag soil is easier to handle

Ask that in a new thread, jeanab1948. At least so that it will be from 2016.

Im tech ignorant an hv no idea wht yu mean. Sorry

jeanab1948, what is meant by "asking in a new thread" is to start a new discussion so more people will see your particular question and respond.

When you first come to the Texas Garden Web page you will see at the top a box that says "Example title: Need help for my kitchen". Type in the subject you want to discuss there. such as "What is the best bagged soil for vegetables?" In the box below that where it says "Tell us the details here ..." you can type in the specifics such as if the bagged soil is wanted for containers, a bed, for flowers, veggies, or whatever.

See you on the 'new thread'. Wishing you the best! Incidentally, in my experience gardening is excellent 'medicine' for arthritis both because of the exercise it provides and because of the good nutrition gained from home grown produce.

I find the quality of soil/compost available at wholesale yards to be vastly superior to the bagged stuff you can find at HD or Lowe's. You will also find a lot more option. So much so that even if I only need a couple cu ft of a soil, I will drive out of the way to get their products.

You can measure out your space (length/ width/ depth) and they can calculate how much you need, with experience in how much it settles after time/ watering.

I source soil, etc. most often from Whittlesey. I usually go with a soil amendment rather than soil to correct for the heavy clay. Pro- Mix in particular is excellent for adding organic material to heavy clay. For a less 'compost' type mix, I go with Austin Soil Amendment (I'm in austin and they have specific regional mixes). They also sell in bags, not just bulk, so if you don't have a truck, you can grab a number of bags at a time. Bagged products are much higher in cost per unit than bulk, of course, but their bags are cheaper than what you can find for a comparable product at the big box stores (if you can even find a comparable product).

Living Earth Technologies soil is far and away your best bet. It was a very sad day when they left San Antonio.

I would not till anything into the soil. Rake off the old mulch completely, add the topsoil, then instead of compost I would add organic fertilizer like corn meal or alfalfa pellets at a rate of 2 pounds per 100 square feet. Why? When you bury bark or mulch of any kind, the decomposition of the wood in the mulch takes over priority for nitrogen in the soil. Any nitrogen already in the soil and any that you add goes right into wood decomposition. Wood normally decomposes on top of the soil where there's plenty of nitrogen in the air. When it's buried that source of N is cut off.

I've been all over the map with compost. If you want compost, again, skip Black Cow and go with LETCO. Compost is where LETCO really made a name for themselves in San Antonio. Independent testing showed they had the best mix of microbes in the compost. Having said that, the best use of compost is to restore microbes to a depleted soil. If you get soil from LETCO, it won't be depleted. It will be ready for organic fertilizer, though. Apply that from the top after you have it leveled.

If 30 cubic feet will bring the soil up to perfectly level with the concrete, get more. Once that 30 cubic feet settles over the next 3 years, it will be lower than the concrete again. Added soil should be mounded up, or crowned, so the settling levels it out. I can't tell you how much crown is needed, but it would be on the order of an inch or two.

If you can get shredded cedar mulch from the Texas Hill Country, I suggest using that. Why? Because it's a really nice product on the ground and it helps to get rid of the cedar problem in the Hill Country.

30 cubic feet is more than a cubic yard, so I would pay to have that delivered (or borrow someone's half-ton truck. That would be a Ford F-250. An F-150 will suffer with a ton of soil in the back.