Ideas for Restoring a Raised Bed Gone to Weeds

[DukeMaverick]

Hi all, first post so bear with me.
Last summer I moved into a house with a 24"X 4" raised bed. At the time the house had been unoccupied for about a year and the bed was completely over grown with weeds etc. I spent some time pulling weeds and even planted a couple tomatoes, zucchini, green onion, chili pepper plant. But with being involved in getting moved and settled into the house I didn't give the plants the TLC they needed. The plants did ok and I got a little fruit from them.

This fall I pretty much let the bed go again and am now trying to get it to a position to plant this spring/summer. I spent last weekend pulling out the dead plants and pulling weeds and I am concerned about a few problems;
-There is a mint plant that has gone wild in the bed and even made its way outside the bed. I pulled as much root out as I could. But am still concerned it'll grow back.
-There are a couple types of 'clover' (not sure exactly what it is) that have also overgrown in the bed. Those I just pulled out as best as I could. But again they are also outside the bed too.
-As I pulled the heavy growth of clover I found a white and yellow 'jelly' substance underneath it. I am assuming it is some sort of fungus/disease. I scooped it and the soil under it up and threw it out.

As for the soil, I have not done a test on it yet. But it seems in decent condition. My thought is I will buy some compost from the local Waste management site and till that into the existing soil.

I am trying to keep this an organic garden and avoid the use of weed killer etc.

Any help/thoughts would be much appreciated!

[tomc]

Some mushrooms have tidy habit. Others have colorful names like 'dog-vomit slime' (no really thats its name), with less tidy behavior.

All of these are the fruiting body of mushrooms. Just hoe them into your garden, they will go on to wherever good mushrooms go when they die. Discarding them is nigh impossible because the visible part of a mushroom is its tiniest part.

Start now composting. Every new gardener is always a year or more behind their real need for finished compost. All those weeds and spent plants are the beginings of your fertilizer.

[DukeMaverick]

Thanks for the feedback!

That 'mushroom' did look a lot like something a dog would spit up!

Ill have to toss all my scraps in the compost. ( I also started a compost last summer that had been neglected)

It sounds like for this year I will be buying some organic compost from a local store. Outside of a quality compost do I need to be concerned with all the other 'amendments' you can buy for your soil?