David Goldstein
| Special to Ventura County Star
Recently, my wife and I faced an unexpected problem: garden shame.
We were preparing to host a large gathering of neighbors at our house — a meeting to discuss sensitive environmental and community concerns with our new neighbor, the Ventura Land Trust. As host, I felt a need to represent both community aesthetics and environmental values, but as I walked around making preparations, my eyes kept returning to one corner of the yard that wasn’t ready for company: the raised garden beds.
What had once been a productive, attractive little garden plot had become a miniature jungle of disappointment. Gangly plants reached in every direction, but few yielded anything edible. Gnarled carrots came up stubby and woody. Pea pods were tough and bitter.
Several crops had clearly overstayed their welcome, and some volunteers in those beds had never been welcomed in the first place but were sucking up the water from the drip irrigation system. What had started out as neat rows of intentionally cultivated vegetables had become boxed jungles of chaos.
We realized that if we wanted these raised beds to serve both their aesthetic and edible purposes, we needed a fresh start.
With shovels, weed removers and bare hands, we ripped everything out and restarted with a fresh layer of potting soil. Into each of the four beds, we added a 6-inch layer of fresh planting mix: a 50/50 blend of locally produced, high-quality compost and garden soil.
A friend with a pickup truck helped us haul it home from a garden store in Ventura. Raised bed mix and other blends are also available directly from composting sites in Ventura County, including Ojai Valley Organics, Peach Hill Soils in Somis, C&M Topsoil near Simi Valley, and Agromin, at several locations including its headquarters in Oxnard.
Into this refreshed medium, we planted lettuce, carrots, Swiss chard, broccolini and herbs. The aesthetic difference was immediate, and the environmental benefit will come gradually.
Using compost in raised beds isn’t just about better taste and higher yields. It’s about giving plants the nutrients they need in a form that supports soil life, improves structure and enhances moisture retention. But before you fill an entire bed with compost alone, there’s a critical caveat: too much compost can be too much of a good thing.
Compost is rich in organic matter, but it lacks the mineral content and physical structure plants need for root development and long-term growth. A 50/50 mix of compost and native soil or a potting mix offers the best of both worlds—nutrient density and support. Compost adds microbial life and improves soil texture, but it can become compacted if used alone.
Locally produced compost also has a positive environmental ripple effect. By buying it, you’re supporting our regional effort to recycle organics—like leaves, branches and food scraps—into something useful.
That waste might otherwise end up in a landfill, where it breaks down anaerobically and releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Instead, composting returns nutrients to the soil, where they belong.
Raised bed gardening itself adds even more green value. Compared to traditional in-ground gardening, raised bed gardening usually uses less water and requires less weeding. You can also control the soil composition more precisely.
The beds even look good, assuming you maintain them.
As I learned, a garden—especially a front-and-center feature like a raised bed—can quietly decline if left unattended, producing more embarrassment than abundance. But with a little effort and the right growing medium, including compost, you can transform them quickly.
If your raised beds have gone rogue, or if you’re considering installing new ones, your local nursery can help you determine which plants are well-suited to the month in which you are planting. Dig out what isn’t working, add a generous layer of compost and soil blend and plant again with intention.
Maybe your garden will become a topic of conversation at your next neighborhood gathering — for all the right reasons.
Local composters with raised bed mix:
David Goldstein, environmental resource analyst with the Ventura County Public Works Agency, may be reached at david.goldstein@ventura.org or 805-658-4312.
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