Can I ask what type of soil do you have?

Organic matter.
Compost is organic matter but is not the only OM out there. What might be available depends on where you are, so where in the United States are you? What is readily available in New Hampshire may not be in Arizona.
While what type of soil may be of some interest it is not a key factor.
Composting is not difficult, although some seem to try to make it so. The linked composting tutorial may be of some help.

Here is a link that might be useful: Composting Tutorial

This post was edited by kimmsr on Sat, Jan 3, 15 at 6:45

kimmsr is right on all counts but I'll add a couple of comments from my own experience. a) wet down a bit and turn whenever you can, not sopping wet, just damp. If you don't turn the pile, it won't get air. The pile will still decompose, it'll just take longer. b) if all you are composting is yard debris, an open pile is fine but if you start adding kitchen scraps (instead of running them through the garbage disposal (AACCKK)) you will attract critters attracted to the scents. c) if your tiny town has a sand and gravel company somewhere nearby you can probably buy compost and/or gardening soil from them. Usually by the yard dumped into the bed of a pickup truck, or by the bag sometimes, or delivered by the yard.

I'm not sure I'd agree that the bagged compost from HD et al is useless. I've read of one gardener that annually adds lots of bags of steer manure, the kind people who reseed their lawns use. He swears by it.

I hope this helps, the tutorial is a great resource as well, my comments are meant only as 'in a nutshell - just do it.' It's all good. Best solution is a barrel composter - on a stand that you can flip. However, they are a bit pricey. Once the barrel becomes hard to flip, dump it in an old plastic garbage can with the bottom cut off and large holes drilled all around it, and start the barrel all over again. (If you keep adding to just one barrel, it will never 'finish'.) The plastic can needs to be turned too, just lift, re-position and pitchfork the debris back into it. Top with a layer of straw (not hay) to control flies etc.

Happy gardening!

Here's a picture from my beginning compost days, this is 2009. That straw bale enclosure worked well but I wanted to show you the holey can to the right of the pile. My first barrel is there too, lower rt corner. I now have two barrels and no open pile.

If I were you, I'd get one or two of those holey cans going, pitchfork what's sitting in that pile of yours now, and just move the can and re-pitch the stuff from time to time, whenever it moves you to do so. I also will stop at Starbucks (any coffee shop will do) and grab bags of old grounds to layer on with the leaves and stuff as I re-pitch it. Helps it to heat up and therefore decompose faster.

Eventually, someday, I would like to do some "real composting". For now, I just use organic matter that I collect and bag up from the woods,plus kitchen scraps, of course. The latter I dig into different areas that seem to be in special need of a boost; dumping ashes from our wood-burning stove and cheap clay kitty litter on top of the scraps seems to help absorb the odours and make the areas less attractive to beasties. As to the former,often I gather up say 15-20 big maxi-size bags (as much as I can squeeze into my little Punto car) of goodies; some of the best stuff I get from places where woodsmen have cut down a lot of trees and,subsequently loaded them up on their trucks,leaving behind lots of great debris. But I also take bags of pruned-off stuff that others are throwing out,grass clippings, etc;whatever I can get. It still is of enormous help to my soil, even though it's raw and primitive,so take heart! whatever you're doing, you are probably on the right track,and are certainly more sophisticated than I am! cheers, bart

I am really allergic to molds and can't turn my compost pile without severe consequences to my health. Because of this I have three piles and I cold compost, though I do put in some coarse material to provide air pockets to allow it to heat up more than it might otherwise. I fill up one bin, and leave it for 2 or 3 years, depending on what's in it, until it is finished enough that there aren't too many active spores left. When one bin fills, I move on to the next. While it means that weed seeds often aren't killed, it allows me a supply of compost that I can't get any other way. I find that we get regular enough rain so that I never need to water the compost pile - it's always damp even though it's in all day sun.

I also add old manure to the garden every third fall or so from whatever source is available - the neighbor's horses or the local dairy farm.

Should've included more information there: I'm in the eastern panhandle of WV and our soil is full of shale, although when I readied this area for the garden the first year I went through with 1x1" mesh and sifted the whole thing down to a few inches, so the garden has better soil than the surrounding area (although it's still got a decent amount of clay in it).

Here's a local-ish place I can get some stuff from. I'd appreciate some input on what might be best... I don't, however, know what's in the "gold" or "bioretention" mix. I'll give them a call at some point. They have a planting mix, but I was always under the impression that sand wasn't good to add into soil...

I have used lots of mushroom compost over the years with no problems. If it is free or nearly so, use plenty of it. It is not long lasting in the garden, a year or two only. As long as your compost is made of vegetative matter any mistakes you make in managing it, only slows the process. Al

Here's what I do: plop down whatever cheap stuff I can find as a deep mulch. In my area it's chewed up garden waste I get from the transfer station. Add soluble, or at least, easily available nitrogen and water, if necessary.

If you feel like your garden has outrun your soil's fertility, add fertilizer under the compost so it leaches directly to the roots. If you have been halfway conscientious, over the past few years, that probably means nitrogen only. Adding N is only about the easiest thing in the world to do.

It's not absolutely necessary that you dispose of kitchen waste in a compost bin, you know.

TrpnBils ...
A number of things you can do to speed up the compost:

1 - Keep it damp
2 - Add some high-nitrogen materials, that can be anything from urine-soaked stable/rabbit/kitty litter through a small amount of ammonium nitrate dissolved and watered in ... whatever you have.
3 - Add a small amount of a surfactant (1 tablespoon of liquid dish detergent in 5 gallon of water, sprinkled on the bin to soak in) to make the stuff absorb water better.

I use no-turn bins, and as soon as I soak them they start shrinking. The tops and sides don't change much - they become part of the next bin when I take the finished compost out - but the middles turn all composty.

Consider doing raised beds where you layer your compost material directly into the bed to decompose "in situ". Look up "lasagna gardening" to get an idea of the process.

It's better to amend a small area thoroughly than to skimp over a large area. Take what you have and use it in a small area, and keep expanding the area as materials become available.

oops... appears I've left out the link above. http://www.shenandoahsand.com/products.htm#soil

To the original poster..... If your soil is 'heavy' and works up wet and cloddy, it needs amendments. To get there more slowly, add lots of organic matter from several sources. To speed up things, add lots of organic matter plus coarse sand and peat moss...mixing in deeply.

Starbucks Coffee Grounds and bagged wood or leaves or what ever for browns. With coffee grounds the compost can't fail. I don't know exactly why coffee grounds are so powerful, but my compost was a complete failure until I started using grounds and still would fail without them. Even with all the work, I do and the turning often and all of that without coffee it just becomes a slimly mess of sickening gunk. It ends up so gross and smelly, that I can't turn it or even get near it.

nhbabs, cold composting can generate more molds then hot composting would.
Composting is about balance, the right mix with just enough moisture and sufficient volume will produce a good product, but composting is as much art as it is science.
Sunset Magazine had an analysis of coffee grounds done and found they have these nutrient levels
Nitrogen: 2.28 percent
Phosphorus: 0.06 percent
Potassium: 0.6 percent

Here is a link that might be useful: About coffee grounds

The above post says what is in coffee ground if you put them in the soil, but does not explain the effect on the composting processing. Basically it seems to me from experiences, the acid breaks down the food items and the nitrogen heats the browns. Bugs go away and leave, but worms stay on and more worms come. The process speed up at least 5 times faster and if you bother to turn it even more. You should get the coffee to contact all items in the bin.

If you 'read too much' there are certainly a lot of different ways that people use. The point is most of them will work and you will end up with compost/better soil/better plants. The biggest problem I find is that people have their favorite ways and present them as 'do this, don't do that', when in fact the composting process is pretty forgiving.

For example, you can turn a compost pile once a week and maybe get compost in 3 months, or you can turn it after 2 months and 4 months and use the compost in 6 months. Both ways made compost. Neither one is the required or right way.

The most important thing is to put down the books and get out there and try it. See what works and what doesn't, and adjust whatever seems out of balance. You'll get the hang of it.

Sand is not so bad as an amendment but if the soil is clay you can have problems (I assume with shaly soil you do have clay). Smalll amounts won't be noticed (especially with a lot of compost), very high amounts (over 1/3) will be fine, but moderate amounts can make the soil into concrete. Focus on organic matter, and if you find you have to add topsoil for one reason or another, try to get a silty soil rather than sand or more clay. But the clay can be built into a great soil with regular compost additions.

Oh, you asked about compost sources. I agree with the posts above, any compost is better than no compost at all. Mushroom compost is good stuff, watch out for 'not fully composted/still hot' and either add that in fall so it can rest, or compost it till it cools. The bagged stuff is not useless, but you do get what you pay for. I've used both cheap and more expensive. The moderately priced stuff is the best value for your money in terms of NPK and organic matter per pound, but for high volume additions the cheap stuff is not bad.

Tropical, the Sunset article says what is in coffee grounds whether they go into soil or a compost pile. It is an analysis of coffee grounds, not soil that coffee grounds were added to.
So the 2 percent N in the coffee grounds feeds the bacteria that digest the Carbon materials in a compost pile, as would any other source of N.

So your question is what to add to your soil to improve it this year, given the fact that you only have a little bit of compost now:

My suggestions:
I have read and heard great things about the mushroom compost. I'd be curious to know what you heard that was "bad" about it. If you've got a never ending supply, that sounds like an excellent ammendment!

In fact, since I'm in WV too, I'd love to know your source -- is it open to the public, or just a friend?

In addition to the shrooms, if you have a source of manure (don't we all in WV? :) ) then that is a big booster. To improve my shale filled clay soil, I spread about 4 inches of horse manure one year -- it has changed the soil permanently, and in the place where the pile sat while I was spreading it (so it ended up deeper than 4 inches), I get giant veggies every year. But I would add the manure asap (whenever you get a break in the weather) so it has a chance to age a bit before spring. I just laid it on top.

Lots of good advice above on how to improve your composting for future years, but I think if you add the mushroom compost this year, and possibly a few inches of manure as well, you'll have a great boost for next season.

When the grounds go into the bin, they will be changed and altered before the hit the soil. I never direct dig, since I had some plants curl up and die when I tried that once. Also it is so good for the bin, I don't want to waste a single speck in the garden. But if I have just coffee without grounds I may use it water a plants that is doing poorly and it get a boost, but the grounds are too acid or too strong or there is something about them. If you put them on the soil they bring flies and a white mold. I don't dig them in either. I would rather dig in compost if I was digging.

Wow, a lot of great advice. I just want to add that in order for your pile to compost faster, you also need to add good top soil to the pile. The top soil will contain microorganisms that help to break down the organic matter. The proper layering is soil/brown matter/green matter/soil/etc,..

I have been using mushroom soil/compost and it has really made my clay soil very loamy. It has been very easy to pull weeds in areas that have been amended with mushroom soil. I too heard about the negative stuffs about mushroom soil; that mushroom substrate may contain fungicides and pesticides. I figure that if I don't die from eating mushrooms, it can't be as bad. Though if you plan to go organic then the mushroom soil is probably not a good idea to use for amending your garden bed.

There are varying opinions about whether it's necessary to add soil to the compost pile. Organic materials already have microbes in/on them, especially if you're using anything like manure or mushroom substrate which should be loaded with them. Also if the pile is on the ground, they can grow up into it. If you do add soil, limit it to a handful every few inches of depth. Soil adds no nutrients and if too much is used, it will mainly take up space, absorb the heat you want to generate, and compact the pile keeping air out.

I have not heard anything about mushroom compost being high in pesticides. Not that I know everything, but it would be news to me. It does not make sense that they would add fungicides since fungus is what they are trying to grow in it. The material is steamed to kill wild mushroom spores so that only the cultivated ones will grow. In any case, the composting process will break down most pesticides rapidly. And if there are residues, keep in mind you are not eating the compost but only mixing it into the soil, where it is not only diluted but further broken down over time. Very unlikely that vegetables will uptake anything significant from that, IMHO. As a result, Organic standards do not actually require that incoming compost or organic matter be from Organic farms, but only that chemicals are not applied directly on plants being grown.

Can you explain how you lost fertility in your soil in one year?

I'm perplexed by this statement.

Maybe it's a WV thing, but it's very typical for the first year to be great, because you've tilled under the OM that was growing there, added lots of oxygen in the tilling, and this has burned up a lot of the nutrients fast, releasing them for the growing season. The next year, none of that happens, so it's not nearly as good, and by year 3 or 4 you have to move the garden to a new spot and start all over. There's lots of land, so this is what people do, and if they don't have a lot of land themselves, they borrow a piece of someone else's for a couple years.

I spend much more time building my soil than I do with any other garden activities. My neighbors have been saying "aren't you going to have to move that garden soon?" I'm on year 10 at this location. I've got mounded beds (permanent) that receive a ton of TLC, and that no one is allowed to step on.

The OM gets eaten by worms or otherwise breaks down, you must add it again every year or in my case, more then every year, because I don't have any down time for snow. I would say, I add it when ever, I noticed the soil is feeling hard and water is not going into the soil very well, but just sitting on the top of the soil. When you water, dig down a little bit and see if that water is getting to the root zone or just laying about on top.

As for how we lost fertility in one year, I don't know. I'm basing that statement off of the results. Year 1 we had enough yield that we are still using stuff we canned almost two years later. Last year we didn't even have enough to can more than about 3 pints of peppers and that was it. Planted basically the same stuff but in different spots in the garden to avoid replanting in the same location.

Eliza - Where in WV are you? I have two places I know of near the eastern panhandle that carry mushroom compost (one is a hardware store in Maryland and one is a landscaping company in Virginia.....WV is only about 20 miles wide here where I live so almost everything is in another state). With regard to the negatives I've heard/read about the mushroom compost, most of it has to do with a high salt content, but I would think if I applied it early (in February or so) it would leach out from rain and snowmelt before planting season.

Some people Think any salt is Sodium Chloride, common table salt, rock salt, etc. and do not appear to understand that any chemical compound is a salt.
If Spent Mushroom substrate, SMS, (compost) was heavily loaded with NaCl then not even mushrooms would grow in the stuff.
Since there are a ton of trees growing in West Virginia there should be a lot of leaves from those trees that would make a very good soil amendment, and should be available pretty much for free.

Here is a link that might be useful: About SMS

TrpnBils, I am in Tucker county, but I drive back to the DC area at least monthly (family visits), so I can pass by places nearer to the panhandle. I'd love to know your sources! Thanks!

Thanks, kimmsr, for the info to relieve fear of using the shroom compost.

Edit -- oops, I just saw that your two sources seem to be retail outlets. My garden is too big to buy OM for it -- I do better with a couple dump truck loads of manure from a friend's horse barns! When you said "unlimited supply" I thought it was there for the taking -- showing that I know nothing about mushroom compost :)

This post was edited by elisa_Z5 on Fri, Jan 9, 15 at 10:50

This is just a suggestion about the composting: if you're pile composting outside and vermicomposting inside, see if adding some worms and a few handfuls of vermicompost directly to your outside pile. The worms should help break down stuff more quickly, and the vermicompost will be a very rich source of the microbes needed for the compost pile. I'm not saying it will be magic, but it will almost certainly help (and won't hurt).

A properly constructed compost pile will be too hot for earthworms, or any other visible insect often touted by some as being good digesters for compost, until the material has been well digested by the bacteria that do that job.
While composting is quite easy it is a bit more than simply piling up some "stuff", although that will eventually produce something.

@kimmsr, it sounds to me like the existing pile that is going too slowly is not hot composting. And anyway, if it's too hot for a handful of worms (I'm not suggesting putting them all in there, just adding some), they'll leave or hide in cooler bits or at least won't harm anything; the microbes in the vermicompost will still be beneficial.

@armoured, OP is in zone 6. Red worms used in indoor vermicomposting will not survive outside in that cold compost heap.

OP, if I don't shred my oak leaves, they don't compost well at all. In fact, they stay completely intact after a year.

What ratio of leaves:grass did you have? It may simply be that you didn't have enough nitrogen in the mix. How moist did you keep it?

In all my years of gardening I never had 'enough' compost as I mostly gardened in cold climates and composting was a slow process. However, the single thing that made the most difference in the fertility of my soil was trench composting or burying kitchen scraps between plants. This not only decomposes quickly and adds fertility but it also feeds the earthworms who provide one of the best fertilizers available, which is worm castings. As long as I fed the worms my soil was fertile. Helps if you eat a lot of vegetables or can scrounge veggie scraps. I've gotten them from produce departments of 2 stores altho not all stores will allow this.

Another important factor in improving soil fertility is to always cover soil with mulch, preferably one that will decompose fairly quickly. Mulching spring and fall worked well for me. I always used my 'not-quite-finished' compost as mulch, sometimes mixed with sawdust or shredded bark.

Don't agonize over the process of composting, just do it as best you can and you will eventually have usable compost.

I am always amazed when people say "I have added compost to my soil every year and it does not make a lot of difference" and I wonder how much compost was added. A half inch of compost every year will do very little to improve any soil and many people state that they never have enough compost, so what else, what other organic matter is added to the soil.
In my experience a half inch of compost and several inches of other vegetative waste is necessary to get and maintain a level of 6 to 8 percent humus in my sandy soil. Some compost is necessary since it contains some wee thingys that are really good for a healthy soil, but these wee thingys also need much more than about a half inch of compost to feed on and use to feed the plants growing in that soil.
Some people seem to not grasp that compost is organic matter and is one part of the total amount of organic matter that needs to be added to soils every year to replenish what is digested by the Soil Food Web.

One thing is if you just have like one little bin and you are cold composting and not working it much, and you get like tiny bit of compost out of that, and then don't dig it in, but just throw it down, it will end up washing away. You did not improve the soil because the compost did not reach the lower layers and just washed away with water and wind. Digging it in somewhat saves it from being washed away.

@kimmsr: vermicomposting worms, in my experience, survive cold temperatures fine - although they do nothing of note in the cold winter months, they come back in spring fine. Just my experience.

And I'm in a climate _much_ colder than 6b. Note this is for a good-sized outdoor pile with contact with ground - I don't know about small plastic bins. And of course, may depend on the worms and other factors.

Anyway, as I said before - adding some worms to the pile in spring certainly won't hurt. If they like it, they'll reproduce and get to it.

Buying worms is a waste of money, they would live if they can live they will come naturally for free. This worm thing is a myth, they don't really help very much. They are not even native to north America and they eat a lot of compost, that should be just put in the ground. Worm casting is not such a great thing either. Its not the best possible thing you can have. Coffee grounds are much better at helping the pile breakdown.

Coffee grounds are part of what should be composted or put into soil, but they are not a magic elixir. Any Nitrogen source will help feed the bacteria that digest the material piled up to compost, providing the right amount is put into the mix.

It's certainly true that a poor soil (very low in organic matter) will need heavier additions for a few years to boost up the OM content. After that it doesn't need as much to maintain it.

Minor chemistry point: all chemical compounds are not salts. However, I think the point was that NaCl is just one of many salts that can be found in soil, and that is definitely true. Virtually all of the nutrients - N in its various forms, P, K, Ca, Mg, Fe, etc. are all found in ionic (i.e., salt) form in soil moisture.