The next pic shows how the soil looks, now. Soil tests, amendments, compost (including -but not limited to- cotton burr, composted manure and homegrown compost) and peat moss, all mixed to a depth of twelve to eighteen inches, depending on the bed and the purpose of that bed.

Now, the cdirt looks, smells and feels like soil, with plenty of worms, too. Before? Worms were as rare as hen's teeth.

That's Purdy soil now after all your laborious efforts - it's pay skirt (pun intended)!

I have been literally breaking my back this year digging and pulling weeds. The down side to it is that now the weeds love my soil, too! Grrrrrrrrr! I now have an influx of Dallis grass that parallels the Bermuda in difficult removal.....well, it may be worse than Bermuda but there is less of it. The good thing this morning is that with all of this rain, the other weeds were easier to pull. Still, the Bermuda takes me at least a couple hours to dig out a patch of only about 5 sf. My soil is nice and black and packed with earthworms at least 1 or 2 per handful. What a lovely sight!

That was one of the more labor intensive parts of the project. With almost every shovel of dirt, I had to pick out as many of the bermuda roots as possible and toss them aside. Most of them composted quite nicely, once they were fully dried out and dead.

It's an ongoing process, even now. We haven't installed the boxes around the raised beds, yet, so I end up digging up and pulling bermuda and trimming it with a line trimmer in order to keep it under control around some of the beds. Not as time consuming, now, but still a part of ongoing maintenance.

Eventually, all of the sod and bermuda in our front garden will be removed and replaced with edible groundcovers. That's a project for a couple of years from now.

I have another little secret wrt the improved soil in our garden, but it's not a technique I recommend for new gardeners...or for impatient gardners. If you don't get the mixture right, at just the right time, or don't mix it deep enough (twelve inches or more), or don't mix it thoroughly, you can get into *real* trouble with it. They're better off using perlite and following the instructions on the label.

wbonesteel, I have a before picture also. My soil looks much like yours.

I first tried this method last year and it worked pretty well, so I decided to try more this year. It is sort of like placing a donut on the ground and then planting on top of it and mulching all around. The hole in the donut is filled with compost an mulch. The hole in the donut is used to hold water.

I really cant say much about well it does, but it worked well last year, and I hope it will this year.

The second picture has not been planted, nor all the mulch placed yet. This bed is for my Old timey Cornfield pumpkins. I only have 3 plants and want to wait for the weather to pass before I put them in the ground.

Slowpoke, the soil you have there looks pretty danged good from here! Looks like you're doing something right, imo.

Looks a lot like what I'm ending up with.

wbonesteel, this is my third year to work on this spot. None of my soil looks like that from the start. My soil is so shallow and tight I have to raise the level of the planting spot or fight disease all year long. (I live in a low area)

We're starting our third year, here. We don't have a low spot like the one you're dealing with, though.

As you know, getting decent soil in the garden takes some time and work. There is no quick fix. Once you get the amendments and compost mixed in, you've got to let nature take it's course and do what it does best.