Raised bed question~ too much peat~what would you do?

[carol_in_va]

Okay, so I put my 1st raised bed together 2 years ago in the fall, but never got around to planting it last spring. A volunteer butternut squash popped up and did really well, so it wasn't a complete waste. Anyways, this spring it got planted with red cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, and onions. I've seen a lot of mushrooms pop up, and now I'm seeing another kind of what I believe to be a fungus. It looks like brown bubbles on the soil surface at the base of one of the pepper plants, and now on one of the logs (bed frame). After reading on this forum, I believe the problem to be too much peat in the bed. I modeled my bed after Pat Lanza's Lasagna beds and she suggested peat for practically every other layer. Now I'm pretty sure I'm overloaded with the stuff.

I know there's not much to be done right now, but come fall do you think I should take maybe half of the contents of this bed out and mix in something else? Maybe a lot more topsoil? I've got another bed we're taking apart to move and shrink, and a third going in after that one, so the contents can be dispersed among the three beds if necessary...

So what would you do to fix this?
TIA

[vegetable-gardener88]

I would take some soil out and put some new top soil in. And mix it in - this way you'll get a better mix.

Also you could already start adding grass clippings - we add these around the plants and then they compost into the ground.

[rainbowgardener]

Compost is the cure for everything! You could start now just mixing some compost in around the plants/ between the rows, without removing anything.

[tomc]

The addition of something mildly nitrogenous may be enough to get the botanic clock ticking on your garden rich with peat.

If some N is good! Then, more is better? Um, probably not.

You already have a garden in place. Strive instead for mild rather than wild.

Peat is desirable due to it already being of small particle size. It needs a litle more bacteria to work on the peat. Too much nitrogenous mateial will turn your beds into cooking compost bins.

Sounds like things just need a little nudge. Hold off on 40-0-0 urea...

[carol_in_va]

Thanks guys,

I added grass clippings once a couple weeks ago, I'll add more here and there as summer heats up along with some compost. Go slow, nothing drastic, gotcha.

Thanks