>>415946Make your own soil. Make compost from your kitchen scraps and yard waste. If you have access to a wooded lot and are allowed to take deadfall then use that to help make a "hugelkultur" with your compost over the top of it. If you have a vehicle you can haul limbs in you can drive around right after a storm and pickup fallen limbs and debris. You can dig out the top 2 inches of drainage ditches for good humus, rich soil, and compost. If you have animals or have access to manure age/compost it for the required time and use that too. If you have the proper containers, you can save your own toilet effluent and age it for a year and use that as your soil too. Research what plants do best in hotter/fresher composts so you can start gardening sooner. You should be doing all of this in addition to already having soil because these things are an amazing resource for fertilizing your garden and maintaining great soil for vegetables.
Other than simply saying, "I don't want to, because I don't feel like it," there's not much of an excuse not to. Most of my soil comes from deadfall and yard waste. If you have a yard you mow, I highly recommend buying/DIYing a grass catcher for it. They are amazingly helpful.
Besides, what is wrong with paying up front for soil when you don't want to do the work or wait for compost to be ready to plant in? You'll make back your money in food savings the very first harvest.
