What are you using it for? (gardening, lawn, fill)
What kind of mulch is it? (bark or leaf)
Do you have room for two 18-wheelers to pull in? That's a LOT of dirt. You might want a real tractor with a box blade or landscaper's blade on the back to move that much dirt around.

What are you using it for? )my flowerbeds

What kind of mulch is it? (bark)

Do you have room for two 18-wheelers to pull in? That's a LOT of dirt. A yard is not 2- 18 wheelers it's one of those scoop buckets on a big tractor. 14 yards is a load which is a dump truck full. I only need a yard of this soil, mulch mix which will fit in the back of a pu truck. I just need to know how much manure to mix in with it.

So you are buying 14 cubic yards of tree bark. Or you are buying 14 yards, part of which is "soil" and part of it is bark. I'd like to know something about the quality of this soil. Is it a sand or just general dirt? What is the percentage by bulk of bark to dirt or sand?

You asked how much compost to add to this in your first post, now you ask how much manure. They are no way alike, other than being organic and act differently in soil.

Dump trucks come with boxes of 7 cu yds or 11 cu yds in my landscaping business. A PU load is about 3 cu yd organic mulch. A tractor bucket is either 3/4 yarder or a bit more than 1 cu yard. BIG loaders range all the way up to 20 or more cu yds, but those are mostly used in grading and strip mining. You are buying from a company loading 14 cubic yards of shredded bark at a time?

The soil mulch mix is called a garden mix it has top soil, sand, a little bit of manure in it and bark all mixed in together. It's from western rock. ThatÂs what they told me 14 yards is a load. I only need one yard of it for my flowerbeds. I'm sorry I meant compost to mix with it. I bought this garden mix a few years ago and by summer it gets really hard to dig in and someone told me to add compost to it that would help it.

Soil is composed of a mineral part, organic matter, air and water and you already have a lot of the mineral part and most likely need organic matter so why spend your money on what you already have, soil, instead of what you need, organic matter? Do not buy soil and add organic matter but do buy organic matter and add that to the soil you already have.

I don't already have it if I did I wouldn't be buying it. I want my beds across the front to be higher right now they are even with the ground.

If you are adding to your flowerbeds or creating new ones, you don't need to add any compost to it, although it certainly won't hurt. The soil mix has more than adequate fertility, nutrients and organic matter to serve most plants fine, at least initially. Soil mixes are typically intended to be stand-alone products and should be good to go as is, although for edible crops, I might bump it up a notch or two.

Check with the place where you're buying the mix & find out if they custom mix materials;
if so, you can have them include some compost in the cubic yard of material you're getting, & you won't have to stir & mix & break your back, at least not quite so much.

The more compost you add, the nicer the texture.

Have fun!

If you have purchased this before and found that it got hard and difficult to work in a fairly short time that should be another clue that this is not what you want. A good soil will have between 5 and 8 percent organic matter in it, and that is what you need to do to the soil you already have. If you want raised beds then possibly some good garden soil, with about 5 to 8 percent organic matter mixed in might be a necessary purchase but most often I can, if necessary, make a raised bed simply by adding organci matter to the soil I already have.

I wish I could maintain more than 5% organic matter in my soils. Here in the subtropics, organic matter "burns up" quickly. Native soils have a half percent or less of organic material in soil samples.

In beds on one side or a path, our farm soil has 3.7% ave OM, having been amended with compost and other organic materials since 1994. The beds to the other size ave. >2% having been amended since 2000. Of course at seeding or transplanting time, we augment with more OM so for the duration of the crop, OM percentages are elevated over the average, approaching 6%.

I'm not making a raised bed. I have a 4 in edge around my flowerbed. The soil in it is even with the ground. I want to fill it back up where the soil is at the top of the edging again like it use to be. I have 172 feet by in some places is as wide as 5 feet of flowerbeds to do. This soil, mulch mix by the yard would be easier for me to mix compost in with it whenever I can find out how much compost to mix in with a yard. Then all I have to is shovel it right out the back of the truck into the bed. Then go get another yard after yard till the bed is done.
This soil mulch mix is cheaper in the long run and goes a lot further then buying bag after bag of just soil. The compost they have is either mushroom or cotton seed either of these would be ok as an amendment to this soil mulch mix. I used this mix before years ago and the plants did really good in it but it does get hard in the summer time and hard to dig in.

Hi Janet

First off I am not a gardener nor a flower growing kinda guy.

If I wanted to add compost to a yard of stuff I would use about 40 liters of a good quality compost. Preferably a yard waste compost made with grass clippings/leaves/plant waste (no human MSW bio-solids). The stuff that Bill P. in Texas makes would be perfect.

Reasoning...a cu yard is about 764 liters, 40 liters would be about 5% or so by volume. Start with that and adjust up or down next year (if required) based on results and what you want in the end. I'd also think about a leaf/straw mulch on top as well.

Lloyd

I know we're all frustrating you.
I'm going to, too.
First off, I wouldn't buy any soil amendment with bark in it unless I have something to add which will offset the nitrogen borrowing, which wood products do while breaking down. If it were me, I'd be adding manure or bloodmeal if I bought that product.

I would say to you, if your soil gets hard in the summer---buy as much compost as you can afford. You need it.

Who is Bill P. and what part of Texas? I live 78 miles out of Houston. I do make my own compost in the compost tumbler it just doesn't make near enough for all the beds I have So I have to buy compost also. The two compost that I listed earlier is the only two western rock has right now. They are even out of all the different kinds of manure right now. I haven't had a chance to work in the flowerbeds for almost two years and they are in bad shape. I got the front and one side weeded out and hopefully this weekend I can start putting in this soil mulch mix. Where I live I don't have many choices where to get soil etc at by the truck full unless I go to the next town which is 30 miles away verses 8 miles down the road from me. That basically leaves western rock and what they have. They only sell it either by the yard or load. They are not going to have a way to measure or calculate 40 liters. All the other places like Ace or walmart, home depot etc sells it by the bag. Ann that's why I wanted to know how much compost to add to it because it does get hard in the summer my whole yard does you can't even put a shovel anywhere in my yard in the summer. I don't care about the yard itself I just want to be able to dig and plant in my flowerbeds. I guess what I'll have to do is just put in the soil mulch mix then come back and add a good layer of compost on top and dig it in and around to mix it. Since they only have mushroom and cotton seed compost I was going to buy a yard of each and mix those two together. Is that ok or should I just stick with one type of compost for now? If one type which one?

Sorry Janet, Bill P. is "gonefishin", here is a good link to his story. (closer to the bottom of the thread)

20 liters is like a 5 US gallon pail.

Your plan to put in the soil stuff, add the compost and then mix a bit is what I would likely do. Once again, I am not a gardener so this might not be the best method but I would enjoy doing it.

I have no knowledge of mushroom or cotton seed compost so I can't even venture a guess, sorry.

Lloyd

My rule of thumb:

1 cu.yard of soil amendment covers about 300 sq. ft. to a depth of 1 inch. To amend 8 inches of soils to 25% OM, you need to add 2 inches of amendment. For a 1000 sq.ft. that adds up to about 6-7 cubic yard load.

Hi Marshall, interesting, may I ask how come 25% OM (or is this just a demonstration of the formula), is it because of the warmer climate you need more?

Just curious

Lloyd

I'm probably going to need 10 plus yards of the soil mulch mix and probably 5 to 7 yards of compost. I don't know the exact sq. footage of my flowerbed but it has it has a weird design it has in some places 3 ft wide, 4 ft wide and a couple of 5 ft wide and 172 feet long it has straight and curves all through it. Ok I get a yard of this soil mulch mix I then mix 5 to 6 -5 gal bucket full of compost is that right?

Hi Lloyd. I never apply more than a half-inch to an inch myself of finished compost but I have tilled in masses of green manuring materials. At the end of the season, there is little organic matter left. I suspect that Janet's imported soil mix is adequate in initial OM, but in her climate, the OM is broken down rapidly in the presence of moisture.

In hard ground, my practice has been to crudely break up the ground and add pretty coarse organic material. As the material breaks down, the microorganism and macroorganism keep the larger soil pieces separated, so to speak, allowing better movement of air and water in and out of the soil.

In really clay soil, I start removating by breaking up the clay roughly and then add bagged (semicomposted) steer manure mixed with leaves and chopped straw. The organic material is roughly scratched into the upper few inches of the clay soil, watered and mulched with several inches of the same mix. Within a year, you have a workable top soil with a raised profile.

Thx Marshall. I have to keep reminding myself not everyone experiences the dormant season we get up here.

If you didn't have the green manure would you increase the amount of compost or use a substitute nitrogen?

Now when you say "pretty course organic material" are you talking like a shredded straw/leaf type of thing or a more substantive thing like wood shavings? I have an endless supply of wheat straw and I often wanted to shred straw and leaves in a nice mix for soil amending and/or mulch. I like the mix of nutrients with the leaves and the bulk of the straw.

I would think your manure/leaves/straw mix sounds ideal for any kind of soil. I don't have a clay issue here and I am not too familiar with the clay people often talk about on the forum. I was very impressed with one picture that showed very nice plants growing in clay, I didn't know that could be done.

One of my neighbors grows alfalfa commercially and every spring he has a few bales (1000 pounders) that break or he couldn't sell. I'd really like to get a hold of some and shred them up with the straw and leaves as well. I think that would make a heck of a mulch or a great compost base.

Lloyd

Hi Janet

I'm wondering about how much organic material the mulch mix already has and how much should be added. If there is already some in the mix, adding 5-6 pails/yard might be really increasing the OM to a level not needed.

After re-reading the thread, I wonder if I would just add an inch of compost over your existing beds and then putting the mix on top of that? Or even seeing if there is a horse owner around that would give up some of his "waste". Maybe putting some of that down first then covering with the mulch mix might be an option? The horse manure I've seen around here is a nice mix of straw and manure so I would think that would work well under the mulch mix.

Just thoughts out loud so to speak.

Lloyd

Hi Lloyd ,

I'm not sure of the ratio of the mix but it has top soil, sand some manure and bark all mixed together. They call it a garden mix.

We have a horse and have collected some of the manure. People have said on threads it needs to age 3 to 6 months before putting it in the flowerbeds. Where we have it a lot of weeds and grass has already grown up through it within the 1st couple of months and I wasn't sure if I still could use that in the flowerbeds so we've been putting that in the composter. I guess the question is does the manure have to age before it goes in the flowerbeds or can we collect it and spread it now in the flowerbed? I never understood why the need for aging the manure.

I have read about the weed issue with horse manure, I guess I was envisioning a pile of manure in a farmyard that has been sitting for a while. I wasn't thinking fresh, sorry I didn't articulate that too well.

I was thinking that if you covered the few inches of manure with the mix you were hauling in, it would be nicely covered and any smell would have a tough time getting out. With flower beds I wouldn't be as concerned as I would be with vegetables. I know that's going to stir up a bees hive but when we were kids we used to pull a carrot out of the ground, wipe it off using our shirts and chow down.

If compost is where you are leaning, I would still go with a couple of pails per yard of mix, just a gut feeling that that would be enough.

Please, don't take anything I speculate about regarding gardening as knowledge. This is more of a musing in my mind. I'd like to get more into gardening but alas, a lack of time prevents it for now.

Lloyd

Lloyd, adding nitrogen fertilizer is not the same as adding compost. As a general rule in warm and aerated soils, the more nitrogen there is the faster organic material is decomposed. Also, the more the soil profile is disturbed, the more nitrogen loss from "stored" nitrates/nitrites and from the disturbance of microorganism ecology. Denitrificating bacteria and related microorganisms go at a fast and furious.

Some of the initial "fertility" our gardens experience is due in part to the partial capture of this freed nitrogen and other nutrients and other compounds.

If I can, I always add composted material in association with planned planting. Adding a lot of fertilizer to a soil ahead of time works if the material is incorporated into the expected root zone. Spread all over the surface few inches means mostly nutrient loss. I have to remind myself that transplanted crops or even seeded crops need little fertilizer to get established. They need it in 2-6 weeks. In warm soils, a green manure crop or a tilled in crop remnant will release most of their nutrients in a few weeks to maybe 5 weeks. The nutrient value of such material is pretty much passed within 12 weeks although high CEC in the form of humic material and/or clay will tend to conserve more of the nutrients from leaching or volatilization.

There is something magical about leaves and straw in both making compost and for mulching and surficially amending the soil. These together are a filet mignon and Maine lobster feast for soil organisms. I'm sure that statement will generate a bit of feedback from members of this board. To me added woodshaving or sawdust is like throwing sand on the campfire.

Alfalfa is different than wheat or other grain straw: much higher in N, rich in auxins and other growth regulators, and maybe too stimulating for most crops right away. I use alfalfa pellets to top dress roses and side dress corn and the heavier feeding sorghums.