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Convert terrible soil into great gardens with ease by drinking lots of coffee. Actually, it's not the coffee that helps; it's the coffee grounds. For alkaline soil, such as you'll find in many community gardens or near building foundations, coffee is a great natural soil amendment that will help bring down soil pH.
You probably can't drink enough coffee yourself to generate the grounds you need, so check with local coffee shops and ask them to save leftover coffee-bean burlap bags and used coffee grounds for you. Another acidifying material is sawdust, so see if you can round up some from a local woodworker.
Layer the coffee grounds, sawdust, and burlap bags over your site. The nitrogen in the coffee grounds will help the burlap and sawdust to compost, and the pH should drop during the composting process, too.
For other sources of sawdust, check lumber mills if any are nearby. Before adding sawdust to your garden, check first to make sure the lumber isn't pressure-treated. The chemicals used to make pressure-treated wood are not safe to add to your organic garden.
