Mistakes To Avoid When Having Topsoil Delivered To Your Home

From pruning to starting seeds, there are plenty of tasks you can do to prepare for your best spring garden. But if you've got raised beds or you've inherited a yard with poor soil, you might thinking about using topsoil in your garden to give your plants a healthy foundation to grow in. Unfortunately, not all topsoil is created equal, and choosing the wrong stuff or not planning ahead for your delivery can result in topsoil that ends up doing more harm than good in your garden.

To help you avoid some of the most common mistakes gardeners make when having topsoil delivered to their home, Ashley Esakin, a gardening expert and YouTuber, spoke exclusively with House Digest about the key mistakes to avoid and her top tips for ensuring you get the right topsoil for your garden. The host of the Gardening in Canada YouTube channel has a Bachelor of Science in soil science from the University of Saskatchewan.

From checking the weather to avoid having topsoil delivered on a rainy day to asking the right question to ensure you get a high quality soil your plants will love, Esakin went in-depth on the most important things a gardener should do before having topsoil delivered to their home.

Among the biggest mistakes gardeners make, Elaskin said having your topsoil delivered on a rainy day is one of the worst. Rainy days can cause soil compaction. "If it's dropped in place, you right away are starting off with compacted soil," the Gardening in Canada host explained. That's going to make it heavier for you to move and harder to mix into your existing soil.

The second big mistake to avoid is not using tarps. In her exclusive interview with House Digest, Esakin said gardeners need a tarp both on top of and below the pile. "The top tarp keeps things dry and lowers erosion loss," the gardening expert said. "The bottom tarp is for keeping the brick, grass, cement, etc. clean." She recommends laying out the bottom tarp ahead of your scheduled delivery and making sure the company knows that's where you want the topsoil placed.

The third big mistake, according to Esakin, is getting too much topsoil delivered at once. To avoid erosion or compaction, you want to get the topsoil incorporated into your garden beds as quickly as possible. If you order more than you can reasonably move in a weekend, you might end up having the leftovers sitting for weeks. To reduce those risks, Esakin says you either need "smaller drops or more man power." In other words, shrink the load to something you can manage or enlist friends and family to help so you can get the larger load spread quickly.

Some gardeners make the mistake of assuming any topsoil they order is good for the garden. But "topsoil has a different purpose compared to a triple blend mix (garden soils). Therefore, it is considered lower quality typically," Esakin explained in her exclusive interview with House Digest. To ensure you're getting the best soil for your plants, ask about the source. "Is it from a local residential building area? Bottom of an old [slough]? Farmer's field? Knowing the history is important to diagnose any future problems."

Topsoil excavated from a construction site might have construction debris inside. If it was scraped from a slough or other swampy area, it might be very acidic and have poor structure. Meanwhile, soil from farmland might contain herbicides or other contaminants that could affect your plants.

Instead of just ordering topsoil, Esakin recommends asking for a loam. There are some key differences between loam and topsoil that will impact your garden. Namely, topsoil just refers to the uppermost layer of soil, regardless of content and quality. Loam, on the other hand, is a classification referring to soil with a particular ratio of sand, silt, and clay minerals. To be called loam, the soil must be made up of less than 52% sand, have between 7% and 27% clay, and 28% to 50% silt. Within that range, Esakin says you can ask for a more clay-heavy loam if you need to improve moisture and nutrient retention or a sandy loam if you need to improve drainage.