No time to make good soil? Buy it

I highly recommend composting home and yard waste to improve your garden soil. It saves landfill space, saves money, and saves buying sometimes unsustainable alternatives, such as peat moss. But if you didn't start last year, you're not going to get meaningful amounts of compost from your yard any time soon, so to boost your soil, there are several bag alternatives you can buy relatively cheaply. The one recommended to me was cotton boll compost. It's rich in organics, plus, it's a by-product of cotton, so you're not mining a natural source. It has a nutrient ration of 7-2-2, an acid pH, which is good for Colorado Springs soils, and has lots of trace minerals. Unfortunately it can possible pesticide residue from the cotton industry, (so if you're strictly organic, it's not for you) but it's also the compost of choice for commercial gardeners in town, according to the folks at Good Earth Garden Center. So, I'm trying a little experiment: I have amended one of my beds (left) using my own compost, plus coffee grounds. I amended the other using 4 cubic feet of cotton boll compost. We'll see how they match up as I start planting next week!