What were you planning on adding? A lot of organic amendments need time to breakdown or be digested before they start contributing nutrients.

Compost can and should be added now, but whether other soil amendments might be depends on what they are. Materials such as rock phosphate, granite dust, limestone, will need several months to become available. Materials of high Carbon, such as shredded leaves, may cause the soil bacteria to spend time and energy (Nitrogen) digesting them which ties up nutrients needed by growing plants and should not be added that close to planting.

It depends.

kimmq is kikmmsr

Tell us what you're adding and what you filled the raised beds with.

Thank you all. I was thinking of greensand, bone meal etc... The boxes were filled with bulk screened loam (I think I expected it to be better, seems to be a high percentage of clay and sand). Also mixed in some bulk screened compost. The boxes were placed over the original rich garden soil, full of leaves breaking down from last fall, compost and worms (about 4-6 inches down).

Rachel

I would suspect that mainegirl would indicate someone from Maine.

You can find many definitions of what is Loam, but my experience is that it is a mixture of minerals of about 45 percent sand, 25 percent silt, 25 percent clay and 5 percent organic matter. I have seen some sources that mix soil particles together at about 45 percent sand, 45 percent clay, and 10 percent organic material since silt is a bit difficult to get today.

The greensand, bone meal, etc. will not contribute much to your the nutrients this growing season if put in the soil now, even if the Soil Food Web is very active. But the only way to know what might be needed, if anything, is to have a good reliable soil test done and the University of Maine does that.

http://umaine.edu/publications/2286e/

kimmq is kimmsr