Recipe for great dirt

Where I live the soil is pretty good i guess. There is alot of clay in it, and it has a good layer of black top soil. The only problem is, the weeds and grasses around here love it too, which makes gardening in the ground more trouble than it worth. I don't know about you but I'd rather spend my summer afternoons sipping lemonade in the hammock over chopping endlessly at rouge weeds. The abundance of weeds also tends to deplete the soil of some of the nutrients. My solution? I have gone to raised bed gardening which works great in just about any situation. I dont use alot of the local soil for the beds though, as it is usually full of grass and weed roots and seeds. My favorite mix for growing just about anything is peat moss and Miracle Gro potting mix. I usually stick to a ratio of 2:1, 2parts peat moss to 1 part soil. If I'm doing a huge bed, I might go ahead and use a little of the soil from the ground if I have to. The peat moss really helps hold moisture and it adds organic nutrients. One other little trick I have to growing the big baddest veggies i can... horse um .. manure. For a couple of years we had two horses as pets, and we ended up with an endless supply of manure. It's not a "hot" fertilizer like chicken manure is, which means you dont have to wait for it to dry out as long or worry about it burning your plants. If you are interested in trying the manure method, but you dont have a horse or other farm animals, check with your local stables, many of them shovel away truck loads a day. You can also buy the stuff, but it's alot more expensive.