How to Improve Soil and Build an In-Ground Garden Bed

One of the most productive gardens at the new home is this in-ground salsa bed right here. I just rototilled it up and improved the soil, which makes use of something that was already here. And honestly, it's doing really well. So in today's video I'm going to show you how I improve existing soil to form up a very simple in-ground bed. Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening where it's my goal to help you grow a greener thumb. And if you have the space and or if you want to use native soil to improve even a raised bed, then I think this video will help. Now, this is something that, you know, I haven't done a whole lot of in my gardening career where I've focused a lot more on these raised beds back here. But since I have the space now, I figured why not try it? I've been inspired by people like Charles Dowding over in England about his no dig method. Now this isn't quite that, and I'll explain why in a second, cause I am going to till this, but I'm only going to till it once in its entire life. So without further ado, cultivate that Like button for Epic in-ground beds and let's get into the video. I know I want to put a couple in-ground beds here, but before I do that, I have to figure out what process to use cause it's going to depend on what's underneath. So here we have some wood chips. We need to brush those aside. I of course already know because I built this bed, but I want to go through the methodology. First of all, I see little bits of grass and I see some Bermuda grass. So weed in a grass. And what I'm guessing happened before I bought this place is the flippers who flipped it came through with a sod cutter or a skid steer or something and just scraped the whole front yard to chop the weeds, but they didn't really remove the weeds. And that is extremely compact to the point of almost feeling like concrete. And so I know I'm dealing with a very heavy and compacted clay. I've done a mason jar test of which there's a video on my YouTube channel about how to do that to see your soil texture. So I pretty much either have to till this or loosen it in some fashion unless I wanted to put cardboard and compost on top and wait a whole season to loosen it up, which I don't want to do. So I want to till it once. I'm really not destroying any soil life cause I guarantee there's not much going on down here. So let's loosen it up with the tiller. And then we will make our amendments and create probably another beautiful bed like this. It's getting kind of late, so I will come back tomorrow for the till. But man, just look at this bed. I'll leave you with this for the evening and I will see you bright and early in the morning. Look at this bed. Habaneros are coming out too. Ooh, it's going to be spicy. It's a great morning to do the new beds because we still have the marine layer and a nice breeze coming through. So I'm not going to sweat my face off. But first I want to measure it out. So I'll talk about how I do that. I want about 18 inches or so between beds. It's a little tight, but I'm going to be managing these ones by hand, not with tools. So I can do that. So we'll just measure that out real quick, which is right about here. Clear some of these wood chips out as a marker. This bed is about 30 inches long, which is exactly how long I want the other one to be. So I'll measure that out too, which goes to about there or so. Okay, so there's that. Now I need to just clear this out because now I need to find my till path. It's going to be roughly this. As I get a new place, I really want organization or at least some semblance of organization compared to my small old garden. So I am being a little particular about this, but you certainly do not have to. You can go willy nilly if you want. I just want a nice clean space here. Got to get the wood chips out of the way first. We'll just use these and hill them up after. And we can use them as mulch. Now what I got to do is get this tiller started. Last time I used it, I ripped the pull handle off a few times. So I need to get less jacked and less strong and just give it that gentle pull and we should be good to go. I want to get about four or five inches or so down, but I'm also going to mound the bed up around the same amount. So I'll have eight to 10 inches of improved soil to work with, which is more than enough for all these annual veggies that I want to put in. This is a Mantis XP tiller I got from Home Depot. I just rented it for about a week or so. So I'll be doing more tilling projects, but it's really easy to start up. You just got to throw the choke forward, which it already is. Hit the little gas pump thing for a couple tries. Turn it on, on, and then pull the pull handle and don't break it. Let's see how it goes. Phase one is complete. We've cracked open this crazy hard clay soil. Now the next thing I want to do is another round of tilling, but to mix, not to break up. So I've got some land and sea compost, some mushroom compost, and this stuff right here. Basically just you're adding organic matter. And clay soil that's going to lighten it up. And of course it's going to add some nutrients that we might not have in here. So let's add this in. This is called Compost Hero. It's got some biochar in there as well. And it has some mycorrhizal fungi already. So kind of get it off to a nice start. Seems to have worked really well over here. Let's mix it in. I'm going to till this in, but I want to just rake it over first, so it's nice and smooth. This bed is already starting to look a lot better. Look at that color on this compost here. Eventually all of this soil will look this way, but it'll just take some time. Okay. That's the rough form. Let's fire this bad boy up. Start mixing. Almost done. We've mixed it in pretty well. We've got another four or five inches to play with. So I want to take some more soil, put it on top, just a prepared sort of raised bed style mix, just to be our topper and then form the bed up. So as I form this bed, I just want to reiterate that I'm really not looking to till more than once. And the only reason I'm doing it this way is to save time. I want dramatic time savings up front instead of spending a couple years. That's a lot of a human life to work on this small patch. Let's till it once. Let's set it up for success. Let's build that soil life. And then let's never till it again. So that's what I'm looking to do. You know, I really have been inspired by guys like Charles Dowding going out to his garden, his farm practically. It's an amazing space. And he's done so much with the no dig, no till style movement that it is something I want to do. I just want a little time savings up front. The final batch we're going to put on here is just a mixture of a couple of different potting soils, raised bed mixes as a topper. Really high quality, the best that I could get. So that's what I want to do because I want the very, very top, which is where most of the plant's roots are going to be, especially these annuals at the start. Let's make it the best stuff that we can do. And then we've improved this clay soil below with some great compost, some biochar, some mycorrhizal fungi, a bunch of other great stuff. But on the top, let's give them the cream of the crop. This really does form the rest of our bed and it gives it a bit of an elevation. So it's got a nice look to it. We've built up maybe eight to 10 inches worth of loose, friable soil that our vegetables are going to do really well in. Now it's just mixing this in, forming up the bed and getting those wood chips back in place. And then I've got a little special treat as far as planting. I tell you, there is nothing like the sight of a newly formed bed. It just looks attractive, if I'm being honest with you. My friend's coming over in a few to plant out some Thai cooking plants in here. She runs a Thai restaurant, so I want to show you that. But I'm going to give it a nice water in. You'd be very surprised how much water can soak up in these new beds. There's just so much. Give it a very nice water. Man, it looks good. Got a lot of space and I'm probably going to do a lot of in-ground beds. This is more cost effective if you want to do it. You certainly don't have to do an in-ground bed, but if you want to use your native soil and improve it lightly with a couple bags of compost and soil, then you're in a good spot to do a pretty cheap garden. Now there are some downsides. Of course, you've got to get to the ground to work on it. What I plan to grow in most of my in-ground beds are crops that want to climb upwards or grow very tall so that I can work with them at my standing height. I don't want to be growing like radishes and onions down here. I'm pretty tall and I really would rather grow those in a raised bed situation that's maybe right here. So I'm just more excited about that. But let's keep watering in. We'll wait for my friend to get here. You guys are going to be excited. And then we'll plant this bed out. Look who showed up. Hi, it's Supani. My friend Supani from Supani House of Thai. So what did you bring Supani? I brought Thai eggplant. Okay. Basil, Thai basil. Yep. Kaffir lime tree. Lime tree. Lemongrass. Lemongrass back there. Kahlili ginger. Kahlili. Kahlili. Kahlili. Yeah. Okay. And that's for my garden. Marigold is a lot of meaning for that. This is Thai eggplant. No, Thai chili. A little basil. More basil. Look at that one. That's beautiful. Flowers. Yeah. We're going to put together. Let's do it. Let's do it. So I wanted to plant a garden that was Thai inspired. So we have a ton of amazing stuff from my friend Supani who has three amazing gardens and an awesome restaurant. Just look at this. That is one beautiful, beautiful zinnia right there. You've got to grow nice and tall. I always say to my... Yeah. You speak to them? I speak to them. I always say grow big and tall and then I will take you to the restaurant. I bet I've eaten a bunch of the plants that you've talked to. Yeah. You know? Probably. Yeah. Yeah. I talk to every single one of them. I think that's how you make things grow. I think. What do you have to say to the marigold then? I just going to say that get big and tall so you can bring success and, uh, successful to Kevin. There you go. Thank you, Marigold. There it is. It's that easy to set up an in-ground bed. This one is my Thai garden and I'm going to be putting a bunch more in here. But just to recap, move away your material, your wood chips, your mulch, whatever. Check your soil out. And I've got a couple different videos on how to do that up in the corner here. But you want to look for texture first. What kind of texture am I dealing with? Too heavy in clay, too heavy in sand. With clay and sand actually, adding compost is a great remedy because in clay it's going to lighten up that soil and in sand it's going to help water retention while still adding a lot of organic matter, which sandy soil lacks. And then till that in. You don't have to till if you don't want to, but there's a bit of a different process for that and it's a little bit slower. So I wanted to till this one time and then form your bed up, plant in, water in and mulch at the end, which I'll do later on. But that's it. Really easy to do. Fantastic way to set up in-ground beds. And until next time, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.