Kleetus: Your soil looks good, unfortunately all I have is pure sand as I'm near the water.
That and baking sun and horrendous weeds means I don't bother gardening.
eksasol: No our soil sucks, its Florida soil with root knot nematodes, making it impossible to grow things like tomato without extra work. Those are compost I made from leaves. I had a tree service unloaded almost a ton of woodchips for free so I mulched my entire backyard with it, which will help overtime.
I've been hearing a fair bit lately about straw bale gardening, which claims to help deal with soil problems. The bale itself starts to break down inside, making for a good root base - or something like that. We're going to give it a shot next spring, to put some veggies out in gravel-covered spot but that also gets a ton of sunlight all day long.
We already have some bales in place to sort of insulate some outdoor water drains, and they definitely do break down into some good dirt / mulch stuff. The random plants / weeds that find their way over to the bales seem to thrive.
