The first time I got a recipe for amending the soil in my new raised garden bed, I followed the recipe and sprinkled it over the soil in the box. Then my husband used lumber scraps and built a second box. I didn’t bother amending it. I bought vegetables in the little 4-paks that year but had too much to fit in the one amended box. I decided to put a couple of each kind in the amended box and then, without even thinking that I was setting up a perfect control group, put the extra plants in the unamended box. The difference between the plants in the amended box was astounding! They were very tall and deep green and the vegetables produced there had much more taste. The photo is one leaf from a zucchini in the amended box in comparison to the zucchini plant in the unamended box. The other photo is the amended bed. Everyone who experienced my garden that summer is amending their soil!
