Top soil Where to get some cheap or free?

A question about : Top soil Where to get some cheap or free?

This may not be the right place to ask this as I am a newbie but I am after some topsoil for our raised beds in the Brighton and Hove area. Does anybody know where I can get some free or cheap or any other recomendations so I can start planting as all our seed is growing rapidly in the greenhouse.

Many thanks

David

Best answers:

• Might be worth checking out your local freecycle!
  https://groups.yahoo.com/group/freecyclebrighton/
• I have already posted on there but thanks
• we have the same problem: filling new raised beds, and instead of going for topsoil, i went for the compost option. slightly more expensive than free soil, but i looked around on the council website (I'm in manchester so that specific website is no good to you!) for composters, and found a company recycling all the fruit and veg waste off the local market, turning it into compost. great stuff, we've just had a cubic square meter (or so) delivered for Ј12.50, and unlike manure, you can use it straight away. get onto Brighton Council, they may offer something similar, many councils are these days, if nothing else, composting all the garden waste from parks etc., in an effort to reduce the landfill problems.
  what you need to do is to dig your bed out, dig the topsoil out, fill with the compost, then put the topsoil back. thats what i'm doing, and growing me own veg there - they should have a super start with all this compost (it was still steaming when they delivered it!).
  HTH
  keth
  xx
• Have you tried your local council, I know that here in Fife they usually have something available.
• Not free, but I had 15 tonnes of excellent t/s from DMS near Lewes, which was the best price I could find in East Sussex.
• Durham County Council are giving away compost on particular days through March & April it was in the council news letter & should be on their website - hope this helps somebody here in the north.
• Whatever you do make sure you get it from a reputable source and that it is free from pest and diseases! Down here in Cornwall there is no end of trouble with Japanese Knot Weed, which once rooted is extremely hard to treat.
• I live further along the coast in St Leonards and can say who not to go to! I went to stamco and what I got was sandy subsoil - I was really disappointed to be honest. I spent a fortune adding nutrients to it before I could plant up my beds last year.
  Not only that, but one bag had a layer of rubble buried in it about half way down the bag! It was delivered while I had popped out so I wasn't in a position to send it back.
  I have to say though, its clear you get what you pay for. I had never bought topsoil before so had no idea of price. I paid £80 for a one tonne bag and had four bags delivered.
  My garden recovered and we managed to get quite a bit out of the vegetable garden: https://groups.msn.com/AngelasPhotogr...05.msnw?Page=2
• I live in Manchester, my problem stems with the garden, I'm guessing the previous tenant had a lawn, and removed it, as the layer in my garden seems too low, and just saturates in the rain, when I moved in it was overrun with weeds as tall as me. So i had the task of motivating the soil after de-weeding, it took a good 3 months for it to grow any kind of lawn, but the lawn is just too muddy, my Son cant play football in the garden as he literally sinks. I tried to make a makeshift drainage system, just a trough around the edge of the lawn, but its still not good enough, I'm wondering what to do next, I dont want to invest a large sum of money an a new lawn, and would only consider top soil if it were a reasonable price, as my property is rented. Anyone got any tips or ideas???
• We have some that you can have for free. We built a deck out the back and hired a skip. There was to much soil for the skip, so we still have it.
  We live in AShford, Kent though.
• I too am looking for topsoil. We took up a small, 2mx2m patio a few years ago and put some topsoil down, then grasses it. We didn't get all the rubble under it up so the grass never really flourished. So one day I got a mad idea and began digging it all up again. About 20 trips to the tip (with a boot full of rubble filled buckets) later I now have a huge hole in my lawn!
  I thought about pinching soil from the boarders but it wouldn't go far.
  Why do I start these things?:confused: !
• Have you tried looking in your local paper? Thats where we got ours from.