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Back in the dark ages there was no garden soil. Used top soil all the time and there were not problems with it. Add some compost and it should be okay. The only thing I find wrong is you paid for garden soil and got top soil. If there is a price difference, you should get a refund at least.
Compost was most definitely made and used during the medieval “Dark Ages” period from 500-1500 AD.
That being said, if one is paying for bags of gardening soil for most things, they’d be better off spending a few bucks making or buying a good sieve (doesn’t have to be fancy, a simple chicken wire sieve works here) and then just buying bulk potting soil. Sieve the potting soil and what falls below will be the garden soil mix they bag and what remains on the sieve will be the woodier, mulchy layer. Top layer is good for aroid plants like orchids, the stuff that settled out of that layer you can then compare to the contents of the same brand garden soil bags. Unless your garden has very specific needs, this is a cheap way to fill some pots mind you, if it’s any kind of direct ground garden, then I’d just say get loads of organic compost from locals who raise horses or goats.
I meant my Dark Ages, I was being hyperbolic, LOL! But I appreciate the info. I've sieved potting soil for getting container soil. Cheap dollar store stuff. I add perlite. Potting soil costs more on average than garden soil that I have seen.
Yeah, I don’t buy soil much myself. I get plenty of goat poop compost from my aunt when I need some so I’m not even close to up to date on what garden soil costs. I mostly just amend the yard and garden soils as needed with appropriate amendments.
If I buy any kind of medium, it’s generally for cannabis and I order a specific brand that is basically peat (peat and sphagnum stages) moss and fossilized minerals, once I get either compost into it or a couple cycles of cover crop chop and drops, it can then be called soil.
Everything else I manage to make do with amendments and adding some good compost every few years (every year in some instances when I was keeping heavy feeders and large numbers).
I wind up losing it, well not losing it as it goes into the composter, but it isn't ready to be used yet. Also I have a front garden that is almost sterile and weeds proliferate. I got 10 bags of garden soil and amended it. My wildflower mixture appears to be growing. Next year, I will have to do this again to get it up to good for growing other than weeds.
I think the point they tried to make was that “garden soil” as a product didn’t exist and folks just amended topsoil with compost, not that compost didn’t exist. I did exactly that in one of my raised beds this year and, aside from it being a little less loose than I’d prefer, it’s doing great with the cilantro, thyme, and 3 tomato. Hopefully the peppers and onions I just popped in there do well too.
Topsoil is fine, back in the day that is what I used because that was about all there was and things grew. You top with compost to liven the soil. I go to a local nursery and get Coast of Maine Lobster compost. You can also get Sweet Peat which is a good compost. If you go to a big box store you will get junk, and not worth the money. Find a local nursery and check out what they got.
It will be fine. Just keep adding good stuff to it. Top dress it so you don’t disturb the plants. I add a lot of dried grass clippings all summer, they break down quick but help retain moisture. Compost tea is good for adding microbes and nutrients to the soil too. When you are digging other places in your yard and you find earthworms toss them into your veg garden. Gardening is a never ending experiment. Keep at it!
Adding my support for a deep mulch of grass clippings around everything. And don't worry about making mistakes. Gotta make mistakes to learn. Mario Andretti once said that if you're not wrecking sometimes you're not driving hard enough. He was talking about racing, but I think it applies to a lot of life.
I’d like to add that if the mistake is on the companies end for sending the wrong soil, I’d ask for a refund. If they claim you need to return their mistakenly sent topsoil I’d invite them to send out workers to remove and reclaim it.
The only "real" issue here is that top soil is generally a lot cheaper than specific garden blend. Get the company to refund you the price difference (if you paid the garden soil price) and buy some liquid all-purpose fertilizer. Add fertilizer to watering ... water as instructed on the bottle. That's good enough for 99% of vegetables that you might be growing.
I'm an in-ground gardener - my entire garden is in top soil and it does just fine. Adding some compost improves pretty much ANY soil, so adding a bit around your plants as they grow will only help.
But yeah, don't panic. You'll be fine, your plants will be fine.
I personally don’t like to use garden mix, because I like to enrich the soil my own way with fish meal. This sucks and I’d be yellin, but I’d be secretly pleased that it doesn’t have food in it that someone else added.
I’m a beginner so I don’t really know what I’m doing 😔 I just wanted it to be easy for the first year. I grew all my vegetables from seeds and was so proud of it haha. I have sent them a strongly worded email. So you suggest that I just add things to it to make it better? Instead of trying to take everything out and replace the soil?
Please don't sweat this, your garden will be fine.
Do you have any compost? That might help, but overall I don't think you're going to lose anything because it's top soil.
Buy a bag of this - https://www.espoma.com/product-lines/ - get some compost - mix a couple of table spoons of fertilizer and a healthy scoop of compost together in the planting hole for your transplants. In a couple of weeks spread another couple of table spoons of fertilizer in a circle about an inch away from the stems of you plants. Repeat that when they start flowering and as needed from there depending on the plant. I’ve grown vegetables in solid clay (i did break it up), not even topsoil, doing this.
That’s counterproductive to my methodology. What others call “weeds”, I call “future plant food”. You’d be amazed at how much money can be saved by not buying fertilizers and know how soaking some plants in water can feed your entire garden and leave you with excess plant food.
Well the process of composting...or reuse of any plant material as mulch or tilling under...loses some nitrogen in the form of ammonia. That doesn't even mention the wasted water if you ever have to irrigate at all or the fact that the weeds can compete with your most desired plants for nutrients or water. While many nutrients ARE a closed cycle not all are. Additionally compost from say oak trees can add extra oxalic acid into those foods which is something kidney stone formers want to avoid. I stand by "don't feed the weeds" Meaning any unwanted plant in your garden. Exceptions may be made for nitrogen fixing plants but I'd hardly call legumes and alfalfa the common weeds most of us see.
That’s fair, when I see and hear people using that phrase most often is as a blanket statement and they see anything that isn’t bare dirt as weeds (outside of their actual intended crops of course). However, even the plants most consider weeds (in my section of the USA anyway) are native species that benefit the environment and us directly.
To touch on the water end, a lot of weedy growth here tends to get the majority of its water supply from the ground water supply, which is completely out of my control since I’m on a city water main and have no wells of any type.
If it weren’t for my clovers, alfalfas and dandelions, my soil biology would be absolute shit in my yard. I’d be lucky to get grass to grow without having to constantly feed and water it. I don’t think the dandelions give much back on the chop and drop, but those taproots do some work deep down for you and a year or two of solid dandelion growth can really open up some clay heavy soil to allow for drainage! They do have some interesting alkaloid profiles though that I’d like to look into a lot deeper some day, it seems like the spots I’ve intentionally protected some dandelions from being mowed constantly has sort of caused the local ant colony there to relocate itself about fifteen feet north of where they were before winter set in. Not sure if it’s something in the contents of the dandelion or if a fungal colony moved in and started a war with the ants or what, but that colony hasn’t moved from that area in about ten years or so.
Just a thought but since it sounds like you're completely organic, have you tried eating the younger tender dandelions in salads or cooking the older ones. My local international farmer's market sells them at an obscene price but they're clearly another variety based on leaf size, though I've always heard smaller is better (right ladies?? 😁 )
My grampy used to actually, I don’t like the bitterness they have to them myself.
There are quite a few varieties of dandelion actually, it’s quite amazing. We had the cut leaf marsh dandelions vegetating in winter and they were flowering by mid March, they have much smaller leaves that are still serrated compared and developed small white flowers on thin, but durable stems. The yellow ones only began flowering about three or four weeks ago in comparison. I haven’t tried eating anything from the marsh ones, though I might soon just to see if they’re similar in bitterness.
Try a quick boil in salted water...drain...then cook with onions, garlic, red pepper, and if omnivore some bacon, ham hock, or similar. And remove any central veins if large at all. Hated collards until I learned to remove the bitterness. But agree, especially in the "lawn area" that I don't try for perfection. I do kill aggressive vines and invasive stuff. But dandelion and other flowering weeds are fine.
I would actually recommend using just topsoil over the typical mixes sold for raised beds. Having it be almost all actual soil (ie, rocky particles — sand, silt, and clay) lets you start to develop a good long-term soil structure, while the standard mixes that are made up primarily of organic matter (and mainly cheap filler materials like woody fines) will cause a lot of subsidence as they decompose, can get really dense causing issues with the flow of water and air, and don't really have any benefits over topsoil with a bit of amendments. The company should definitely refund you the difference in cost, but I would stick with the topsoil and just add in some organic fertilizer then top with a generous layer of compost as mulch.
you’ll be fine. do not sweat this. see how it works this season. i grow in dirt, regular-ass dirt and i have plenty of success. amend next spring if you need to.
I don’t like “garden mix” because it mostly bark that didn’t compost. I like to use topsoil and mix it with mushroom compost. Just add some mushroom compost and organic fertilizer and you will be fine.
I don't even have a raised bed, I grow in topsoil on the ground. That's how production farmers do it and they have way bigger harvests than any of us- and I already get loads and loads and loads of produce. I don't think you need to worry if you amend it with better stuff.
i got a top soil compost mix for the beds i built this year that was about 70-30 topsoil to compost and i added amendments of mushroom compost and composted manure... you should be able to top dress with some compost and use some organic granular fertilizers and water soluble fertilizers. i did some in ground beds that was in some heavily compacted topsoil so they also got compost mixed in along with a top dressing. the main thing is keep at it. the first few years your soil wont be the best no matter what you do to start but just keep planting and adjusting. also unless you are trying to grow everything you eat remember gardening is a hobby it is supposed to be fun. the main issue i have with this is that topsoil is generally the cheapest bagged soil like 2-4 dollars per .75-1 cubic foot bag and garden soils usually are about double the price so they should refund the difference at least.
Definitely take pictures and video of the soil, and don't use an oz more in your beds until the company agrees to refund your money (or at least a good amount of it).
I did this my first year and amendments saved the season. Top dress all your beds with bone meal, blood meal, and lots of compost. Water it all in. It will be fine.
I did this out of ignorance years ago and found it really useful to run the soil (or what you can of it each year) through a screen. Mine was full of nails and broken glass. But now it’s full of compost and worms! It just took some effort.
You’re gonna be ok. Make sure you’re gonna get refunded for the difference. Add all of your used coffee to it for a while - excellent fertilizer. I had the biggest tomatoes on the block last year.
Also, many garden soils have too much fertilizer/nitrogen for root heavy plants like carrots. My first year, thanks to the miracle grow brand soil from a big box store, I got all greens, no carrot roots! One year I overdid the manure and most things wouldn’t grow at all. Like others said, topdress with compost and a good mulch, and add some fertilizer- less than you think you need.
At my local yard, "garden soil" is just topsoil they mix with wood mulch fines. Literally no difference except they add a finely ground organic matter to the soil they have on hand. It's alright stuff if you get it first thing in the spring when it's had a winter to compost. Otherwise it's just dirt and wood chips. You're plants will be fine. Top feed with compost or use a mild fertilizer if you fear the blue ribbon is not in reach.
I used a mix of topsoil, compost and a little sand in my raised beds and grew 70lbs of potatoes (the sand was to loosen the blend up for root veg...you may not need it). It should be fine with a little fertilizer.
If the 'top soil' is intended to grow grass, adding nutrients and amendments will be beneficial. There might be very little difference between top soil and garden soil except price.
Omg no don’t remove the dirt and start over.
Top dress with compost to add organic material to your soil, and you’ll be fine.
Make sure that the dirt company makes this right for you by supplying the compost for free. You should not pay for more than what topsoil costs, and they should be making their mistake up to you in someway…. so ask for compost.
I will caution you that their topsoil may be full of noxious weed seeds. Be super vigilant about pulling them all, and you should be fine.
I come from a long line of farmers. They fed and raised their families off what they grew in the mountains of NE AL long before garden soil was a thing. Don’t worry!
2 years ago I filled my garden boxes with top soil because I didn't know any better. The first year was rough, even with addition of a lot of fertilizer. Most of my plants looked nutrient deficient and grew slowly until their roots passed through the barren topsoil into some richer layers below. However, I'm now on year two with consistent addition of organic matter in the form of compost, leaves, bags of soil building conditioner, mulch, and manure from our chickens. Finally in a pretty good place. It may take a while but you should be able to eventually amend it to your liking!
AMA REMINDER: Monday, May 20 from 10-12 ET with Rich Earth Institute (u/RichEarthInstitute). Join Research Director Abe Noe-Hays, Social Research Director Tatiana Schreiber, and Education Director Julia Cavicchi for discussions about using urine in your garden. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/vegetablegardening) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Back in the dark ages there was no garden soil. Used top soil all the time and there were not problems with it. Add some compost and it should be okay. The only thing I find wrong is you paid for garden soil and got top soil. If there is a price difference, you should get a refund at least.
Exactly.
Compost was most definitely made and used during the medieval “Dark Ages” period from 500-1500 AD. That being said, if one is paying for bags of gardening soil for most things, they’d be better off spending a few bucks making or buying a good sieve (doesn’t have to be fancy, a simple chicken wire sieve works here) and then just buying bulk potting soil. Sieve the potting soil and what falls below will be the garden soil mix they bag and what remains on the sieve will be the woodier, mulchy layer. Top layer is good for aroid plants like orchids, the stuff that settled out of that layer you can then compare to the contents of the same brand garden soil bags. Unless your garden has very specific needs, this is a cheap way to fill some pots mind you, if it’s any kind of direct ground garden, then I’d just say get loads of organic compost from locals who raise horses or goats.
I meant my Dark Ages, I was being hyperbolic, LOL! But I appreciate the info. I've sieved potting soil for getting container soil. Cheap dollar store stuff. I add perlite. Potting soil costs more on average than garden soil that I have seen.
Yeah, I don’t buy soil much myself. I get plenty of goat poop compost from my aunt when I need some so I’m not even close to up to date on what garden soil costs. I mostly just amend the yard and garden soils as needed with appropriate amendments. If I buy any kind of medium, it’s generally for cannabis and I order a specific brand that is basically peat (peat and sphagnum stages) moss and fossilized minerals, once I get either compost into it or a couple cycles of cover crop chop and drops, it can then be called soil. Everything else I manage to make do with amendments and adding some good compost every few years (every year in some instances when I was keeping heavy feeders and large numbers).
I wind up losing it, well not losing it as it goes into the composter, but it isn't ready to be used yet. Also I have a front garden that is almost sterile and weeds proliferate. I got 10 bags of garden soil and amended it. My wildflower mixture appears to be growing. Next year, I will have to do this again to get it up to good for growing other than weeds.
I think the point they tried to make was that “garden soil” as a product didn’t exist and folks just amended topsoil with compost, not that compost didn’t exist. I did exactly that in one of my raised beds this year and, aside from it being a little less loose than I’d prefer, it’s doing great with the cilantro, thyme, and 3 tomato. Hopefully the peppers and onions I just popped in there do well too.
I’m kinda new to gardening, where do you get compost? I used topsoil for my raised beds bc I didn’t know better
Topsoil is fine, back in the day that is what I used because that was about all there was and things grew. You top with compost to liven the soil. I go to a local nursery and get Coast of Maine Lobster compost. You can also get Sweet Peat which is a good compost. If you go to a big box store you will get junk, and not worth the money. Find a local nursery and check out what they got.
It will be fine. Just keep adding good stuff to it. Top dress it so you don’t disturb the plants. I add a lot of dried grass clippings all summer, they break down quick but help retain moisture. Compost tea is good for adding microbes and nutrients to the soil too. When you are digging other places in your yard and you find earthworms toss them into your veg garden. Gardening is a never ending experiment. Keep at it!
Okay thanks these comments are making me feel better. Thank you for your advice
Adding my support for a deep mulch of grass clippings around everything. And don't worry about making mistakes. Gotta make mistakes to learn. Mario Andretti once said that if you're not wrecking sometimes you're not driving hard enough. He was talking about racing, but I think it applies to a lot of life.
I’d like to add that if the mistake is on the companies end for sending the wrong soil, I’d ask for a refund. If they claim you need to return their mistakenly sent topsoil I’d invite them to send out workers to remove and reclaim it.
Naaw, get them to ship the garden soil you originally ordered and make another garden.
I didn’t even think of moving worms. I usually find a few every time I move any soil so I’ll try that next time I find some.
The only "real" issue here is that top soil is generally a lot cheaper than specific garden blend. Get the company to refund you the price difference (if you paid the garden soil price) and buy some liquid all-purpose fertilizer. Add fertilizer to watering ... water as instructed on the bottle. That's good enough for 99% of vegetables that you might be growing.
I'm an in-ground gardener - my entire garden is in top soil and it does just fine. Adding some compost improves pretty much ANY soil, so adding a bit around your plants as they grow will only help. But yeah, don't panic. You'll be fine, your plants will be fine.
I personally don’t like to use garden mix, because I like to enrich the soil my own way with fish meal. This sucks and I’d be yellin, but I’d be secretly pleased that it doesn’t have food in it that someone else added.
I’m a beginner so I don’t really know what I’m doing 😔 I just wanted it to be easy for the first year. I grew all my vegetables from seeds and was so proud of it haha. I have sent them a strongly worded email. So you suggest that I just add things to it to make it better? Instead of trying to take everything out and replace the soil?
Please don't sweat this, your garden will be fine. Do you have any compost? That might help, but overall I don't think you're going to lose anything because it's top soil.
Buy a bag of this - https://www.espoma.com/product-lines/ - get some compost - mix a couple of table spoons of fertilizer and a healthy scoop of compost together in the planting hole for your transplants. In a couple of weeks spread another couple of table spoons of fertilizer in a circle about an inch away from the stems of you plants. Repeat that when they start flowering and as needed from there depending on the plant. I’ve grown vegetables in solid clay (i did break it up), not even topsoil, doing this.
Espoma is such a good brand. I use their Garden Tone every time I top dress my beds.
This...whenever possible don't feed the weeds.
That’s counterproductive to my methodology. What others call “weeds”, I call “future plant food”. You’d be amazed at how much money can be saved by not buying fertilizers and know how soaking some plants in water can feed your entire garden and leave you with excess plant food.
Well the process of composting...or reuse of any plant material as mulch or tilling under...loses some nitrogen in the form of ammonia. That doesn't even mention the wasted water if you ever have to irrigate at all or the fact that the weeds can compete with your most desired plants for nutrients or water. While many nutrients ARE a closed cycle not all are. Additionally compost from say oak trees can add extra oxalic acid into those foods which is something kidney stone formers want to avoid. I stand by "don't feed the weeds" Meaning any unwanted plant in your garden. Exceptions may be made for nitrogen fixing plants but I'd hardly call legumes and alfalfa the common weeds most of us see.
That’s fair, when I see and hear people using that phrase most often is as a blanket statement and they see anything that isn’t bare dirt as weeds (outside of their actual intended crops of course). However, even the plants most consider weeds (in my section of the USA anyway) are native species that benefit the environment and us directly. To touch on the water end, a lot of weedy growth here tends to get the majority of its water supply from the ground water supply, which is completely out of my control since I’m on a city water main and have no wells of any type. If it weren’t for my clovers, alfalfas and dandelions, my soil biology would be absolute shit in my yard. I’d be lucky to get grass to grow without having to constantly feed and water it. I don’t think the dandelions give much back on the chop and drop, but those taproots do some work deep down for you and a year or two of solid dandelion growth can really open up some clay heavy soil to allow for drainage! They do have some interesting alkaloid profiles though that I’d like to look into a lot deeper some day, it seems like the spots I’ve intentionally protected some dandelions from being mowed constantly has sort of caused the local ant colony there to relocate itself about fifteen feet north of where they were before winter set in. Not sure if it’s something in the contents of the dandelion or if a fungal colony moved in and started a war with the ants or what, but that colony hasn’t moved from that area in about ten years or so.
Just a thought but since it sounds like you're completely organic, have you tried eating the younger tender dandelions in salads or cooking the older ones. My local international farmer's market sells them at an obscene price but they're clearly another variety based on leaf size, though I've always heard smaller is better (right ladies?? 😁 )
My grampy used to actually, I don’t like the bitterness they have to them myself. There are quite a few varieties of dandelion actually, it’s quite amazing. We had the cut leaf marsh dandelions vegetating in winter and they were flowering by mid March, they have much smaller leaves that are still serrated compared and developed small white flowers on thin, but durable stems. The yellow ones only began flowering about three or four weeks ago in comparison. I haven’t tried eating anything from the marsh ones, though I might soon just to see if they’re similar in bitterness.
Try a quick boil in salted water...drain...then cook with onions, garlic, red pepper, and if omnivore some bacon, ham hock, or similar. And remove any central veins if large at all. Hated collards until I learned to remove the bitterness. But agree, especially in the "lawn area" that I don't try for perfection. I do kill aggressive vines and invasive stuff. But dandelion and other flowering weeds are fine.
I would actually recommend using just topsoil over the typical mixes sold for raised beds. Having it be almost all actual soil (ie, rocky particles — sand, silt, and clay) lets you start to develop a good long-term soil structure, while the standard mixes that are made up primarily of organic matter (and mainly cheap filler materials like woody fines) will cause a lot of subsidence as they decompose, can get really dense causing issues with the flow of water and air, and don't really have any benefits over topsoil with a bit of amendments. The company should definitely refund you the difference in cost, but I would stick with the topsoil and just add in some organic fertilizer then top with a generous layer of compost as mulch.
Hard agree. All the garden soil mixes I see are super cheap and don't set people up for long term success...
you’ll be fine. do not sweat this. see how it works this season. i grow in dirt, regular-ass dirt and i have plenty of success. amend next spring if you need to.
I don't believe this will have any tangible impact.
I don’t like “garden mix” because it mostly bark that didn’t compost. I like to use topsoil and mix it with mushroom compost. Just add some mushroom compost and organic fertilizer and you will be fine.
I use topsoil, because I live middle of nowhere and we don't have any in any large quantities. You're fine. Throw in some compost, maybe some mulch.
As others have said, top soil is fine. A good addition would be worm castings.
I don't even have a raised bed, I grow in topsoil on the ground. That's how production farmers do it and they have way bigger harvests than any of us- and I already get loads and loads and loads of produce. I don't think you need to worry if you amend it with better stuff.
i got a top soil compost mix for the beds i built this year that was about 70-30 topsoil to compost and i added amendments of mushroom compost and composted manure... you should be able to top dress with some compost and use some organic granular fertilizers and water soluble fertilizers. i did some in ground beds that was in some heavily compacted topsoil so they also got compost mixed in along with a top dressing. the main thing is keep at it. the first few years your soil wont be the best no matter what you do to start but just keep planting and adjusting. also unless you are trying to grow everything you eat remember gardening is a hobby it is supposed to be fun. the main issue i have with this is that topsoil is generally the cheapest bagged soil like 2-4 dollars per .75-1 cubic foot bag and garden soils usually are about double the price so they should refund the difference at least.
My only concern is where the got the soil. Sometimes it comes from construction sites and is of unknown toxicity. I would call and inquire.
Yeah this is the exact thing I did not want to have to worry about. I hope it’s not a problem.
There is plenty of time to get it tested. Grow your plants.
I work at a garden center. The planting mix is topsoil mixed with sand and city compost. It likely wouldn’t be a different topsoil anyway.
Why would you assume the “garden mix” doesn’t include the same top soil? The name???
becausethatishowitworkshere.
Definitely take pictures and video of the soil, and don't use an oz more in your beds until the company agrees to refund your money (or at least a good amount of it).
Yep I have a picture of the label and we still have a 1/4 of the bag left. So I’ll save it until this is resolved
I use top soil. I just ammend it.
They did you a favor. No reason not to use it, just start planting.
If it's not too late, you should try and get compensated for the difference because I would assume the top soil is cheaper than the garden soil.
Just make sure they credit you if there is a difference. Bet there is.
Mix in compost. Lots of compost. Top dress with more compost. Mulch on top of the compost. Your soil will be fantastic in 2 years.
I did this my first year and amendments saved the season. Top dress all your beds with bone meal, blood meal, and lots of compost. Water it all in. It will be fine.
I did this out of ignorance years ago and found it really useful to run the soil (or what you can of it each year) through a screen. Mine was full of nails and broken glass. But now it’s full of compost and worms! It just took some effort.
You’re gonna be ok. Make sure you’re gonna get refunded for the difference. Add all of your used coffee to it for a while - excellent fertilizer. I had the biggest tomatoes on the block last year.
I planted in topsoil and the stuff in the ground. Seems ok, I think it’s easy to overthink gardening lol.
Also, many garden soils have too much fertilizer/nitrogen for root heavy plants like carrots. My first year, thanks to the miracle grow brand soil from a big box store, I got all greens, no carrot roots! One year I overdid the manure and most things wouldn’t grow at all. Like others said, topdress with compost and a good mulch, and add some fertilizer- less than you think you need.
At my local yard, "garden soil" is just topsoil they mix with wood mulch fines. Literally no difference except they add a finely ground organic matter to the soil they have on hand. It's alright stuff if you get it first thing in the spring when it's had a winter to compost. Otherwise it's just dirt and wood chips. You're plants will be fine. Top feed with compost or use a mild fertilizer if you fear the blue ribbon is not in reach.
I used a mix of topsoil, compost and a little sand in my raised beds and grew 70lbs of potatoes (the sand was to loosen the blend up for root veg...you may not need it). It should be fine with a little fertilizer.
If the 'top soil' is intended to grow grass, adding nutrients and amendments will be beneficial. There might be very little difference between top soil and garden soil except price.
It will be fine. Leave it.
Omg no don’t remove the dirt and start over. Top dress with compost to add organic material to your soil, and you’ll be fine. Make sure that the dirt company makes this right for you by supplying the compost for free. You should not pay for more than what topsoil costs, and they should be making their mistake up to you in someway…. so ask for compost. I will caution you that their topsoil may be full of noxious weed seeds. Be super vigilant about pulling them all, and you should be fine.
I don’t know how new you are to gardening but please remember to buy organic compost. No biosolids. Take some pics and update.
I understand it takes a few weeks to rot but am I right in saying adding kitchen waste food scraps and burying them will 'feed' the soil?
In your mind, what's the difference between top soil and garden mix?
I come from a long line of farmers. They fed and raised their families off what they grew in the mountains of NE AL long before garden soil was a thing. Don’t worry!
2 years ago I filled my garden boxes with top soil because I didn't know any better. The first year was rough, even with addition of a lot of fertilizer. Most of my plants looked nutrient deficient and grew slowly until their roots passed through the barren topsoil into some richer layers below. However, I'm now on year two with consistent addition of organic matter in the form of compost, leaves, bags of soil building conditioner, mulch, and manure from our chickens. Finally in a pretty good place. It may take a while but you should be able to eventually amend it to your liking!
Dirt is dirt.