My take on compost is not shared by many people. If you want to spend the money and time to buy and apply compost, I certainly can't come through the screen to stop you; however, unless you have had a chemical spill or a 3-day flood, you likely don't need compost. Just applying organic fertilizer should feed the soil the way you want. Fourteen yards of compost would cost $420 plus delivery. Corn meal to cover 14,000 square feet would cost at most $30 and would provide considerably more benefit.

An alternative to compost is compost tea. You could use a small quantity of compost to make tea and spray that on your soil. You can do that for a fraction of the cost of the compost and get most of the same benefit. Some people say you get more benefit from tea. Certainly you can spray tea a lot more frequently and still never approach the cost of buying compost. The cost of compost enough to make compost tea would be about $0.42 (small fraction of a larger bag). If you use this I would still follow up with corn meal or another ground up grain.

Here is a link that might be useful: Compost tea maker

Thanks for the info, DCHall. Like I said, total newbie here. You sure don't need to come through the screen (entertaining though that might be :) ) to stop me from lugging around tons of compost if I can spray a couple of gallons of tea instead. I'll definitely read up on that.

If you are a noob, read the Organic Lawn Care FAQ on the Organic Gardening forum.