Having spent two years bring some trucked in “soil” back from the dead, here’s what we did.
As part of rebuilding an old house in central Mexico, we created 7 quite large, well-drained in-ground pits as garden beds, emptied them of all the existing rubbish and dirt and refilled them with several truck loads of what I expected to be good soil. But it turned out to be pretty ordinary, clay-heavy dirt, probably excavated from a building site. Oh well.
We found out how poor it was when the majority of the plants we put in failed. (Though to be fair it’s not an easy site with strange sun patterns and tropical rain patterns; lots of sun then none and lots of rain then none.)
So we loaded the dirt up with as much compost and horse manure as it would take, which was a lot; probably 30-40cm deep for the whole garden. We dug this in to about a shovel depth. Then we waited six months and did it again and also added about 15cm of leaf mulch and let it rot down with the help of a few thousand worms we’d bought.
Three months later again we planted a few plants and trees and wall creepers and found that things started to “take” though we were still losing some plants. Digging through the soil would yield lots of worms, insects, etc and the now-soil smelled rich and fecund.
A LOT of work I wasn’t expecting but we now have real soil. It’s still hard to get plants which will thrive throughout the year but we’re on our way. Oh, and the real test? We have birds coming and pecking through the beds.
