>> I'm having trouble searching for some of the soil online.
I think that buying soil and soil amendments is like real estate: the most important three things are "location, location, and location". If you're paying to have bags shipped to you, the freight cost might be even more than the cost of really good soil bought locally.
If it comes down to making your own organic soil, really all you need is lots of compost plus time and some effort.
Have you looked up "wholesale nursery suppliers"?
Or ask clerks at nurseries, and landscaping services.
Or organic farmers, or a group that hosts farmer's markets? Asking them where they find good compost or soil might give you some leads.
If you find someone who raises horses, they may have manure already composted.
if you have enough compost (without pesticides or weed seeds), you can make great soil from almost anything - such as your own yard's soil!
You could look up "dirt yards" right in your area. That will reduce the cost of hauling it. They might sell clean, rich compost, but look and smell before you trust. They might CALL something compost that is mostly wood shavings.
OMRI recently started trying to cover Canada: they might have suggestions that don't show up on their website.
http://www.omri.org/omri-canad...
http://www.omri.org/retail/loc...
http://www.omri.org/canada-lis... (no soil products)
http://www.omri.org/news/11743...
I would have thought that almost any local "big box store" or nursery would offer several high-quality varieties of soil (mostly very heavy) or soilless mixes (possibly expensive). Adding lots of compost will lighten heavy soils over time, and add weight and nutrients to light mixes.
If peat moss is not desirable because it isn't sustainable, bark fines from pine, fir or hemlock serve some of the same purpose, and they last MUCH longer and give you better drainage and aeration.
If you were going to pay for bags of soil online, plus shipping, you might consider other expensive, but local sources.
Bales of soilless mixes approach being affordable, at least as one ingredient in a mix, for small raised beds.
If you can find them for sale locally, Fafard, ProMix and Sunshine all make really great, professional potting mixes that would provide a very light, water-retentive, airy component for a raised bed mix. With brands like those, you get your money's worth from a company that cares about quality (maybe even organic principles), since their main market is professional nurseries. Pro-Mix isn't organic soil, but it is an organic medium.
16 bags of 2 cubic feet, or 8 bales of 3.8 cubic feet, around here, would cost $256 (ouch). So I'm guessing that you would NOT want to fill your beds with that. But perhaps 1/4 or 1/8 of the mix, near the surface, could be one of those. Think of it as very high-quality peat moss.
>> two 4x4 garden beds
32 square feet, 12" deep is only 32 cubic feet
(1.2 cubic yards).
