tclynx,

collect all the organic plant material that you can either from onsite or from the neighbourhood grass clippings included, i'd even suggest go as far as getting all the kitchen scraps you and use this material to built the soil cover it well with a good green hay type mulch, can't see you missing just it will take a bit of organising to get material.

i'm not a big fan but some refuse tips sell or give away composted humus material from collected waste product.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page

My brew:
Shredded tax returns from an accounting firm.
Grass clippings from a friend with a lawn care business.
Horse stall cleanings from the horse farm down the road.
Chipped wood from Asplundh.
Silt from our pond.
Pumkins and straw as mentioned above.
I should do the coffee and tea also, but I leave that to people who don't have access to the larger loads I take from the horses, etc.
Since we have a huge area where trucks can back up and dump, and equipment to stir it all in, we can get more for free than most people. I don't do the grocery store extras because I have too many problems with raccoons already.
If you have patience and storage space, you can improve every inch of your property. That's what I'm trying to do, anyway!
cindi

Don't overlook the nutrient value of your soil. Most parts of the U.S. are short in the necessary elements for producing food for good health. Have a soil test done, and be sure to have them check for trace minerals, too.

Compost and green manures and animal manures are all good, but they aren't the whole story. You can read up on what nutrients fruits and vegetables can contain, but you have to realize that if the soil doesn't contain enough of a nutrient, the plant isn't going to contain it. It can't absorb what isn't there.

Sue

Hey thanks for asking the question & to all who answered- you've helped me learn. Happy gardening all

Starbucks used coffee grounds, grass clippings and cardboard on top to prevent weeds.... add wood chips on top of that to finish it off

if you want to speed-up the decomposition into soil, add molasses and fish emulsion.. this increases bacteria and fungal elements and brings life back to the soil.

If you are in a warmer area, you can add compost worms... they usually only survive in bins, but ive found if you have at least 4 inches of compost (clippings , mulch, etc..) they will do fine. when winter comes they will borough down and can survive light frost if you have mulch on top.

I use a LOT of leaves, twigs, grass, and am growing some nitrogen fixing plants just for chop-and-drop. All this feeds the earthworms that I happily found living in my soil. When I moved here, the soil was bare and there were very few earthworms, but now I can't dig a hole without chopping one or two in half. I've picked them up and moved them by the dozens sometimes, and I've only been here a year. I live in an apartment complex that has plenty of trees full of Spanish Moss. I use it liberally to top off my garden beds. It rots and turns into nice, brown soil the next year. We also have old trees dropping rotting limbs during storms, so I pick those up and break them up with shovel and put them into the garden. I know my garden isn't the prettiest with all the different stuff I use for soil building, but my plants grow so well, that's what people comment on.

What I do that many people don't agree with is to dry out kitchen scraps somewhat inside the house, then toss them right on top of the ground. That saves them from smelling bad. If something need feeding, I bury them into the ground around it. you don't have to go too deep. I keep a lot of used coffee grounds around, and if something starts smelling too strongly (although I like the smell of stuff composting) I just toss a lot of them on top and it deodorizes it.

I also encourage mushrooms to grow, because their mycelium helps carry nutrients through the garden.

I put a sign by the road that says to drop off pumpkins, hay bales, bags of leaves, and potting soil, and they will be composted. Done this for years. I get about 150 pumpkins and squash, 2 or 3 bales of hay or straw, and enough leaves to fill 5 compost bins and still have 10 or more bags to use the following summer to mix with my greens in the compost bins. I bury as many of the pumpkins that are cleaned with no seeds right in my garden beds. By spring they are gone.

Yes there are so many ways to build soil! Can you keep chickens? We do a ton of our soil building in the deep-bed chicken houses we've got. Super rich, fertile soil but it does require a little animal husbandry. But if you like fresh eggs, the soil is basically a freebie! Here's a video my husband made explaining the process

I get a heck of a lot of improvement even in my non-lasagna beds (and they pretty much all are) by covering the rock-hard soil with cardboard then with bark mulch. Sometimes I pull some back and maybe add a bag of topsoil and some compost, then put in some potatoes or other root crop. I'm always amazed by how much it's improved just with that. But I do admit that once I had a little more money, I went straight for slapping down the cardboard and putting some good soil on top. Worked a treat and it was a lot faster. But still, I've done it the right way with just leaves, coffee grounds, wood shavings and cardboard. Takes a long time in my cool climate. One thing I used to do is throw leaves and grass clippings into big plastic bags and let them compost in the garage all winter, then use that for on top of the new bed.