how can i make my soil healthier?

well, you may have added too much of this and that without a purpose and ended up with a very unbalanced soil

How deep is the soil in your garden? Did you plop the new concoction on top of compacted soil? You need to till it in, you need nice loose soil to a depth of at least 12" for vegetables.

Did you water anything? Do you have full sun? The soil is important, yes, but there are other things needed as well.

Don't take it out and start over.... work with it.

Add compost you can buy it in bags or maybe in your area the town has compost center where the collect the leaves and compost them. You may need to watch for weed seeds. Try to get in touch with other gardeners in your area. They are working with the native soil as well and will have lots of advice and gardeners love to chat. They will know if the compost center compost has weed seeds in it or not.

Till it in.

Throw seed for a cover crop over it for the winter. Winter rye, you can get the seed at a nursery.

let the cover crop grow and then turn it under in the spring.

Get a soil test kit from your local extension office http://www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/

amend the soil in the spring based on the recommendations of the test. The recommendations will be generic but if you want to use organic/natural amendments you can make the substitutions. Just don't add things willy nilly, even organic natural amendments contain the same nutrients and can result in an unbalanced soil

Really this all depends on what kind of soil you started with. If it was potting soil, it probably needs nothing added for awhile, and then, add things sparingly. Fish emulsion and blood and bone meal are both very strong organic fertilizers, and could easily upset the balance in your soil. If this is outside soil, my favorite amendment is composted manure, dug in a few weeks or months before planting. That's all I generally use, and it makes for very healthy soil. When you're a new gardener, it's real easy to over-fertilize, thinking this is what plants want. It's generally not. Plants need to grow at their own pace, and it's hard to push them any faster than they like to grow. If you could start a compost pile, that would probably be your healthiest soil addition. It's hard to be certain without a soil test, but your soil will probably grow fine again, too, once these organic materials you've added break down. Are your amendments thoroughly mixed in? It might help to rototill this again before replanting.

I think we need to know more about what kind of soil you bought and whether it was added to existing soil, to a raised bed, or to containers.

One thing that is the kiss of death is to use "garden soil" in place of potting soil in containers. Garden soil is a low nutrient compost that sells for about $1 per 40 pound bag. Potting soil is much more expensive, because it contains perlite- those white pellets that look like styrofoam. The perlite lets air into the soil. In the ground, this would be taken care of by worms and bugs.

If that is the case, the soil you have would work well in a raised bed or mixed into the ground. You could also buy perlite and mix it in, but it wouldn't be much cheaper than buying new potting soil.

Take a sample into a decent garden centre and they will be able to do a soil test on it and find out the PH, they can then let you know exactly what to add to your soil to fix it. You are best to add manure to the soil, scraps should be put into a compost bin until fully broken down.

Try mixing in a compost medium and another great natural resource is egg shells, they are full of nutrients and plants really dig it!

Fertilize