Nope.

I'd send it back, if its wood mulch it probably isn't gonna grow squat until the wood gets time to decompose.

Years ago my Dad and I were working on a landfill closing. We bought some "manufactured soil" which was essentially fine sawdust with sand for drainage. It worked decently as mulch but grass wouldn't grow. We ended up sending it all back (200 yards) and buying "dirt" to replace it. The "dirt" was more expensive but grass grew in it fine.

All kinds of stuff gets sold as compost and top soil. As far as I can tell, the labelling of such things is not regulated much if at all so they can pretty much call it whatever they want to. Sand and wood is more or less "organic" but probably not what you were looking for. If you got it real cheap you might want to keep it but add in some more useful stuff. If you are lucky, there is some manure or whatever in the mix to help break down the wood. I don't know if it will work or not but it does not sound like it's high quality. It sounds like it needs at least a good watering and probably more amendments. I have seen bulk compost for sale at a local supply center for landscape contractors that at least looks like the real thing but there is also a lot of questionable stuff out there. If you find nails sticking out of the wood chunks then you can get extra angry.

LOL-no nails so far...

Thought it seemed a little fishy. And at $60/yard i wouldn't call it cheap but my only other choice for bulk compost is made with 'biosolids'. Not something i want to grow my food in. At least i got in a good first layer of kitchen scraps and fish guts-was going to go lasagna style but i got impatient. C'est la vie-got to be better than trying to grow vegetables in my acid clay.

And there are still people out there that tell me that the purveyors of "topsoil" would not sell you something that wasn't.

If you're lucky, it could be dairy manure mixed with sand. The dairies often use sawdust in their milking parlors to soak up the urine and (often liquid) manure, then they pile it in large windrows and sell it as manure compost. Some of them even turn it.

1. ASK the folks you bought it from what is in it. "I don't know" is not an answer. They didn't pay good money for that stuff just to not know what is in it. Ask for the manager if you need to.

2. If there are any dairies around you, call them and ask of they sell manure by the pickup load*. If they do, ask what they mix with it. If it's sawdust, that's usually okay (smaller size breaks down more quickly when mixed with the manure); if they mix it with bark -- chunky -- it won't hold moisture much at all, esp in your zone 11. (If you got the chunky stuff, mix in a bag of clumping kitty litter, the cheapest you can find. The clay will help retain moisture and any nutrients that might be in it.)

Sue

* I have an old Ford Ranger, and a full bed, leveled off, is really close to one cubic yard. The dairy near here charges $15 for that much, and they load it for you. The garden materials places buy it and multiply the price, esp if they mix it with dirt they got from a construction site.

Sue, your Ford Ranger will, with luck, be close to 1/2 cubic yard. My full size 1/2 ton Dodge pickup bed was about 3/4 cubic yard, but I could not haul a full load of material without having the front end of the truck raised enough so steering was problematic. One cubic yard is a lot of material and weighs much more than a 1/2 size pickup would be able to handle, safely.

i SO hope you are wrong on that kimmsr. i've always heard what sue said-and i haul everything myself in my good ole ford ranger pick-up. You're not just winding me up are you?

How, exactly, does one go about measuring a cubic yard??

OK, so a cubic yard is 27 cubic feet ( 3'x3'x3')
I'm not sure what the dimensions of a Ranger's bed is but I'd guess it's aproximately 6 feet long (short bed)and 4 feet wide (to accomidate a sheet of plywood sitting on top of the wheel wells). This bed could then hold about 24 cubic feet if you piled it one foot high (not accounting for the wheel wells).

I gotta go with Sue & mauirose on this one.

The typical bag of mulch is labeled 2 cu. ft. One day I had 65 of them in the back of my mini van, sure looked like some cubic yards to me. So how much did I have?

130 cu. ft divided by 27?

A cubic yard is 27 cubic feet, 3 feet times 3 feet, times 3 feet. The bed of my full size pick up was 8 feet long by 4.5 feet wide (minus the wheel wells), and 24 inches deep so while I could nominally carry 2.75 cubic yards the weight of the material would not allow that, because about 3/4 yard would lift the front end enough that steering was really iffy, braking was difficult, and the rear springs sagged down instead of up. If you put a full cubic yard of material in a Ford Ranger the weight would put the wheel wells on top of the tires and they would rub.

I had a similar problem the last couple years with bagged stuff bought at local hardware stores (Home Depot, Lowes, Ace). Up until a couple years ago, you would buy a bag of "Compost" or "Composted Manure" or "Organic Peat" and it was basically a bag of compost. 40 lb., and virtually 100% organic matter. This stuff comes from regional manufacturers because it's expensive to ship very far. Some of ours comes from a company 35 miles from here, for example. They are a actually a block, brick and gravel company.

Nowadays, we get this stuff that is basically sandy soil that is dark with some organic matter in it or mixed into it. It's NOT compost. The 40 lb bags are half as thick because of the higher density of soil. I asked the manager at Ace about it, and told him he was being defrauded by whoever is selling this junk. He said he was not aware of it and would "look into it." Meh.

They're selling dirt or MO River dredgings and calling it compost.

If I want a bag of topsoil, I'll buy a bag labelled TOPSOIL. When I buy a bag labelled COMPOST, I want compost, dammit!

Being old, I remember when Ranger was the name for a full sized pickup truck. They use the name for their small truck now, and F-150 for the full size model. The poster refered to an 'old Ford Ranger', likely a full size one.

Chuck

We have the Ford Ranger version with beefier suspension and I can put a cubic yard of compost in our Ford Ranger no problem as long as the material is dry. I have never felt the truck was dangerous to drive; it just feels fully loaded.

However, I wouldn't even think about loading it with a yard of gravel or wet compost.

When I buy compost, the guys are just guessing at how much they give me anyhow. They just scoop some with their front loader and dump it in. Sometimes when I have paid for a half a yard I get about as much as when I pay for a full yard if they are feeling generous that day :-).

The compost you got probably isn't great stuff but as you said, you got impatient. It can be pretty $$ to get really good compost hauled to you. It is still probably better than nothing.

Yep, the amount a truck can haul will be greatly affected by the moisture content.

The compost that our county landfill makes with the shredded yard waste dos have a fair bit of sand that gets mixed into it. I figure it comes from the windrows being turned on sandy ground probably. Of course this is free compost to us but it usually has lots of other less desirable debris in it because lots of people toss trash into the yard waste bags. Glass in the garden sucks.

For $5 we can get a truck or trailer load of mushroom compost from the nearby mushroom farm. (Composted horse manure with straw that has been used for growing a crop of mushrooms before being steam pasteurized and hauled back out of the building.)

Here is a link that might be useful: www.TCLynx.com