Compost is not only a soil amendment, it is the soil amendment with many garden benefits. Soil with a serious pH imbalance should be treated with lime or sulfur or some other pH-specific amendment, but for most garden soil problems the amendment of choice is always compost. Assuming that you’ve got average soil with average problems and you can only add one thing. Compost would be the thing to choose. Other amendments will solve particular problems more quickly or completely, but compost is the best all-around soil conditioner available. To stretch the conditioning metaphor to the breaking point, one could think of most soil amendments as an exercise for one body part — the biceps, or the hamstrings. But biceps curls are not a conditioning program. No one would do biceps curls and only biceps curls and expect the result to be a healthy mind in a healthy body. Cross-country skiing, on the other hand, works just about everything — arms, legs, glutes, abs — all of it. If you’ve got a serious weakness or injury in one part of the body, you may need to work or cure it before setting out, but as a whole-body exercise that will … Continue reading Compost & Soil