Most gardeners make their own compost but if you are just starting out you can buy it in bags at places like Home Depot, Lowe's or some of the other garden centers. Each bag is not too heavy so you can bring them home in your vehicle.
Making a raised bed is easy. The simplest is to lay down some landscape fabric or several layers of newspaper or a layer of cardboard (this prevents existing weeds from growing up into the bed), then pile the new soil on top.
Some folks use large stones, tiles or concrete blocks to hold the soil in place. (Ask
@RickCorey to show you his tile method. Works great and super easy!)
When I make raised beds I use lumber to keep the soil in place... mostly because I enjoy working with wood. If you have a cordless drill/screw driver it's not too difficult a job to accomplish.
These boxes were constructed using wood that someone discarded when they made over their deck. Since I don't know the history of the wood these boxes will only be used for flowers, not for edibles.
This is a photo showing the landscape fabric and several raised beds waiting to be filled with new soil.
This is one small raised bed. The glass is being used early in the Spring to raise the temperature of the soil. Some plants with a larger root system would require taller raised beds.
Here is the same raised bed on June 2nd.
Basic tools that are helpful to build raised bed boxes using lumber.
If you want to be lazy you can have the lumber cut to length at places like Lowe's or Home Depot and use a hammer and nails to put the boxes together.
Corner detail of a planter box I made from scrap 2X4's and cedar fence panels.
Edited because I forgot something...Regarding my image showing my tools:
I do NOT recommend the Ryobi. No, do not recommend it at all. It has very little power. I only use it for drilling holes in soft wood; can't drive screws with the weak little thing and the battery life is bad. Just because something is a pretty color (green) does not mean it will work sufficiently well to get the job done.)
