To calculate the volume amount of material that you may want, we recommend using the material calculator. You are also welcome to phone us and we would love to help you calculate the answer to your question. We recommend using a depth ranging between 2 and 4 inches, followed by tilling as deep as is possible. The deeper you are able to incorporate the compost, the deeper your improved root zone for your plants will be and the greater your water bill savings as well.
Yes, our compost, like any good quality compost should have the sweet musky smell of freshly turned garden soil. Composts that are not finished with the composting process will have a foul smell like any decomposing organic matter or manure. These foul smelling materials are to be avoided. Smell is an indication of quality. Pleasant smells are good, foul smells are a sign of an unbalanced and mismanaged compost recipe.
Yes, we monitor our compost pile temperatures to insure that they exceed a temperature of 135 degrees for three days, which ensures that the unwanted weed seeds are sterilized. This is one of the greatest differences between weed free composts and weed burdened manure.
We monitor our compost piles to insure that their temperatures exceed 135 degrees for a minimum period of three days. This process ensures that the harmful pathogens found in the beginning ingredients are destroyed by heat from the composting process.
Compost is intended to improve the condition of a soil. When a compost is rich in nutrients and is added to a soil at an excessive amount it may well harm the plants. This is good reason that compost should never be used at a percentage of higher than 50% when amending a soil. Also good reason that compost should be evenly spread and thoroughly incorporated into the soil being amended.
No, compost is meant to be used as an amendment to the soil rather than as a soil or as a planting media. Compost must be blended, tilled or mixed into another soil for successful results.
The origin of ingredients that we begin our compost piles with is very important to us. We choose to work with only farms that are paid a premium to abstain from the use of synthetic hormones such as rBST, within their herds. We seek out carbon sources (sawdust, straw, hay) that only come from clean consistent sources. Some competing composts are derived from yard waste or biosolids which can contain high amounts of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides or heavy metal contamination. Our goal in composting is to provide a compost that will benefit our customer, rather than pawn off your neighbors' waste.
The compost we provide to you as a customer is not certified organic. We do follow the required protocol for producing organic compost, but we choose not to register as a certified organic compost because of the high cost of registration. You may be suprised to find out that the standards for producing a certified organic compost have little to do with where the parent material comes from and more to do with the processing of that material. For example an organic compost must be turned a minimum number of times, maintain a pathogen killing temperature of 135 degrees for a minimum number of days. Look for our article "How to Choose a Good Compost." We do sell our compost to several certified organic produce farms.
