I used compost. I found a place in the yellow pages that sold me with delivery, five yards of compost for $150. I put it in raised beds with a mixture of cow manure and peat moss along with a bunch of 10-10-10 fertilizer to round it off. seems to be doing fine. Five yards sounds like a lot, but, i'm almost through it...
Up here, we savor our rocks. Usually if you dig a biggie out..there's your hole!.. :) Use them for bordering..
Then, plant some beautifull plants and watch the local deer munch them to the ground..:)..actually I live in an area where the deer are decimated by hunting each year. I worry more about the squirrels and there cute but vicious cousin, the chipmunk, rooting out and eating my bulbs and tubors...deer have never been a real problem...
Welcome to the North!

I try to make and use compost however I'll shred leaves in the fall and add a 2-3 inch layer into my flower beds and turn them into the soil with a shovel. Over the fall/winter they break down. I also work in some peat moss and perlite during the spring.

Tom

OrcuttNYC,
Would you mind sharing the name of that place and the phone number where you got the bulk compost? I love the mulch/compost combo I'm using now, but you're paying a whole lot less than I am!

And SuVo,
I just build my beds on top of the soil around here - in an abbreviated lasagna gardening kind of way - three or four layers of newspaper, a three inch layer of shredded leaves or straw (any kind of plant material will do) and then about three or four inches of mulch, or better yet, compost. The newspapers kill the grass and weeds under them and then composts nicely along with the plant material, plus you don't have to dig and you never expose buried weed seeds to the sun. You can plant into a bed like this right away. If you are planting something that needs to be planted deeper than the newspapers (like a rose, say) you just tear a hole in the newspapers and proceed like you usually would. I've been using this method for a few years now and it's worked beautifully for me. A great book about this method is Lee Reich's "Weedless Gardening". Really, if I couldn't make beds this way, I think my garden would be the size of a post stamp!

But I also use our local rocks for edging and feel lucky to have that source!

Alders @845-6514177.
..and isn't it Reich who put out that great pruning book?

I start my ground level beds like Shaolin -- by putting a layer of newspaper down (this puts paid to whatever weed seeds are dormant in the soil, and kills whatever has aready started growing -- weedy crab grass, etc. Then a thick layer of leaves, grass cuttings, straw, etc, and top that with several inches of mushroom dirt or composted manure which has been lightened up with peat moss -- you can plant seeds and small plants (like impatience or other bedding plants) right away. If you start a couple of beds in the fall, they are all composted richness in the early spring, and more than suitable for planting perennials!

Raised beds are the best way to go for veggie gardening -- fill them with mushroom dirt or top soil which has been amended with peat moss and/or composted manure.

I bought top soil for an asparagus bed and blueberry bushes since they were going in a low spot where there was no soil at all. Otherwise I use compost mixed with whatever there is. But digging out all the rocks is a lost cause - because under them is still more rocks - we're talking glacial moraine here. So yes, put down a thick layer of newspaper and build your bed on top of it. And then mulch because the mulch will break down into more top soil.
My older beds have that deep, soft loam which makes gardening so easy.
And think about deer protection ybecause you are going to need it.

Thanks for the number! What town are they located in?

Yes, Reich put out the pruning book, and the weedless gardening book, and also one on unusual fruits for the backyard garden, but my favorite one that he wrote is "A Northeastern's Gardener's Year" - it's got lots of good advice but isn't as dry as his other books tend to be.

I started with truckloads of topsoil/compost from Croswell. They specialize in this stuff. I think they're in Stone Ridge. It eventually reverts back to Hudson River sand, so I keep replenishing it with my own homemade compost and mushroom soil I get from the guy on the corner of Zena Rd. and Route 28 in Kingston. My plants are happy.