How I did it: My husband had landscaped with landscape fabric, leaving the dirt underneath unable to renew itself with fresh organic material and nutrients.  So the first step was to take that up.  "WHAT ABOUT WEEDS?!" you ask?  To be honest, the fabric wasn't effective, anyway.  The weeds were growing in the mulch that was on top of the fabric, and the plants were anemic.  It took some convincing, but it was worth it in the end.

Then, we put down fresh mulch in all the beds (for the weed issue).  We happened to get tons of it for free from a neighbors tree that was being trimmed.  The tree company came back at the end of the day and dumped a TON on our driveway.  It was honestly more than we needed but we put it all down, anyway.

This mulch started breaking down into the soil.  The soil was kept cool and moist.  We started finding a few worms.  This was a good sign.

On some beds I did sheet mulching, and to create new beds we sheet mulched.  It was a lot of work, but it paid off.  The soil is soooooo much better now.  It helped that my SIL has a floral business so we had access to lots of organic waste to use on the beds.  To sheet mulch, we laid cardboard (also from her business :) ) and then started making layers and layers of organic waste.  There is a certain way to do it (Google it) but basically, we weren't too fussy, figuring that all the stuff would eventually break down and it would all be an improvement.

We also put our fall leaves on the beds instead of raking them and disposing of them.  This saved a lot of work hauling anything out or in.  We also mulched leaves into our lawn.  The grass was nicer last year, though we couldn't be certain it was from that.  We got a good amount of regular rain, too.

Last, we got free finished compost from the city pile in early spring and spread it on top of most of the beds, especially the new sheet mulched beds because otherwise seeds and plants had nothing to grow in yet (all the plant wastes hadn't broken down yet).  That was fantastic.

We also maintain a compost bin for ongoing compost-making.

We plan to continue to do things to improve our garden soil, but this goal can never truly be "complete."  It's an ongoing part of gardening tasks!

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Mar 27, 2011, 09:21AM PDT | 0 comments | 7 cheers