Should You Top Dress Compost Or Incorporate Compost With Soil? Which Option Is Best For Your Garden?

Top Dressing Compost Vs. Incorporating Compost With Soil. Which Option Is Best For Your Garden? Garden soil purchased from the store is essentially a 50/50 mix of compost and soil. It's the ideal mix of nutrients, physical structure and microbe buffer. This is why incorporating compost into the soil you are just starting out with is ideal for plant growth. After the compost is incorporated into the soil you can continue to supply nutrients and microbe food via top dressing within reason.

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Ashley is a soil scientist who has had a passion for plants since she was a small child. In the long summers as a child, she would garden alongside her grandmother and it was then that she realized her love for greenery. With years of great studying, Ashley had begun her post-secondary education at the University of Saskatchewan.
At first, her second love, animals, was the career path she chose but while doing her undergrad she realized that her education would take her elsewhere. And with that, four years later she graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a bachelor’s degree in science and a major in Soil Science.
Some of Ashley’s interests are YouTube, in which she posts informative videos about plants and gardening. The focus of Ashley’s YouTube channel is to bring science to gardening in a way that is informative but also helpful to others learning to garden. She also talks about the importance of having your own garden and the joys of gardening indoors. Ashley continues to study plants in her free time and hopes to expand her YouTube channel as well as her reach to up-and-coming gardeners.
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[ricebeansrockroll]

I just got my gardenplot last year, I'm the 5th person to have it in as many years.
People have been adding a layer of potting soil (including leca) each year, planting, and abandoning.
It was clay sand with not an ounce of life in it.
I spent most of last year digging in grasclippings and leaf mould, and removing weeds.
Around July last year I found worms 💜
I added a layer of leafs for fall, and next week ill dig in a few logs in areas where I see some errosion happening, two sunken worm-bins (red wrigglers are native here), and adding some manure to the areas where ill plant asparagus and chili.

After this I will let the soil be and do it's thing.
The joy I felt seeing those wriggly worms and centipeeds moving back in though.
You know the scene in Castaway when he made fire?
Yeah.
I HAVE MADE WORMS

[MindandSoil]

Thanks so much for the shout out here Ashley!! So fun working on those beds with you and can't wait to see the next experiment results shortly!! 🥳🥳

[nomadhomad]

I just top dress since I'm lazy and have found my worms don't like to be disturbed

[dreamlovermimi]

I like to mix amendments into my clay soil. Just helps with everything especially the perlite and coco peat

[Runboy]

There may just be something to the Vermiculite. I know in "Square Foot Gardening" Vermiculite is part of the equation and people regularly report massive yields with just 6" soil depth. Great video!

[anthonynakane]

Indoor, under a grow light, I planted grass seed... Tray with 100% mushroom composite (from big box store) had zero growth. Tray with 100% fertilized potting soil had good growth.

[brianseybert]

Through the growing season I top dress my beds with home grown worm castings, usually if we are going to get a heavy rain. The compost I produce I use in potting mixes and top dress my potato bed and grow bags in the fall. Tip: 25 gallon grow bags work great for outside worm bins.
When starting out 3 years ago seriously gardening I spent a ton of money incorporating high quality local compost with native soil in my beds. I also dug down a few feet in two of my main beds and filled the bottom section with different degrees of decaying and sound logs and branches, along with any other organic material I could get my hands on. The first 2 years I had tremendous settling, this year not so much.
I've gone to round cage hot composting this year. It is a lot more work than "lazy composting" but I can now focus on quality over quantity. My 3rd pile is almost done for this year, and now I have to wait for the leaves to fall before I can do one more pile. When a pile is finished, I place it in a bin and let it rest for the remainder of the year. I also will do some top dressing with leaf mold this fall.
I greatly increased my production of leaf mold over the last two years. I also found double shredding and insulating my leaf mold bin over winter worked very well. My 1st batch of leaf mold took 2 years the pile I started last fall is already practically done.
The plants I used leaf mold as seed starter did fantastic, wont be buying any more peat, ever.
Really enjoy your videos.

[razzlekhan]

2:43 Everything before this is a COMMERCIAL.

[davidanderson]

I love your informative videos Ashley. Last year in late Fall I grew a cover crop of alfalfa. I hacked it down to soil level put down a couple inches of compost, covered it with a heavy brown tarp to prevent any light from entering. Fast forward to a week ago and the roots have died yielding a nice soft soil. I left the soil intact mostly aside from tilling the top a dab and laid a couple more inches of compost down. I watered that in and planted a couple of tomatoes and a row of carrots on the west facing side of the raised bed. I can't wait to see the results.

[johnduffy]

Great info! It will change my compost application methods

[kelleyleblanc]

Thank you so much for sharing all this valuable information for free :). I’ve learned so much from your videos that have helped my garden this year.
Just a suggestions for a future video - if there is more interest - I’m in the process of hardening off a few pepper, tomato, cucumber and zucchini plants I will be planting into fabric pots with the hopes of moving them into a greenhouse when the temperature falls below 10 degrees so maybe a video on how to extended the season using a greenhouse with warm weather crops and maybe later cold weather crops for the greenhouse?
Just a suggestion if there is interest

[katipohl]

Here in Germany I do vermicomposting directly in sunken beds (50 cm deep and about 70 cm above ground, horse manure). Eisenia fetida survives temperatures down to 20 degrees celsius and mixes the compost with my sandy soil. Adding vermiculite to my 90l containers seems to be a good idea but costly.

[kariannecrysler]

Thanks for the excellent information 😊

[kurtcurtis]

Great video. Best channel Appreciate your generosity with your knowledge

[hosoiarchives]

How do you tell if you have too much compost

[thereseboogades]

Fantastic video ! Such an interesting & thorough look into compost incorporation. I also found your last section on the comparisons trial quite beneficial- vermiculite- heck, I forgot about its water retention capability. Thanks so much & I certainly will be enjoying your videos. 😊❤ Hello from Virginia Beach, VA

[krisyallowega]

My preference will always be soil based. As I get on in years I am finding that I have to spend a good 20-30 minutes to warm up and get those "kinks out" prior to gardening. Why I am using more containers is simply because there are too many rabbits around mowing everything down.

The majority of my compost is used as a top dressing because of my perennial plots. Of course I recycle my container's potting mix and amend it with compost. It has been so long since I have purchased potting mix I may be over doing it a bit now when refreshing with compost.

When digging in the compost we have to be a little "sciencey" with our application. We may find that a larger amount is required, what is it called, volume per volume percentage? Meaning we take 1/2 a yard of clay soil and we want to amend it with 1/2 a yard of cured compost. Hoping that we would have 1 yard of materials. Well you may need almost 3/4 of a yard of compost to make that one yard. I guess what I am saying is you need lots of compost.


There was one thing in particular that I learned from Dr Elaine Ingham. That once the compost has aged and cured the best thing to do was to grow plants with it. Don't just spread it out or dig it in and leave it. I am sure there are a few other things she has mentioned before that I have forgotten. I haven't viewed much of her content as I believe her agenda has skewed off course somewhat.

[WhatWeDoChannel]

I add a layer of my compost to my beds in the fall and till them in come spring, I really like growing in my native soil! I hear a lot from the No diggers about their soil having more beneficial fungal qualities than my tilled soil, I would love to hear what you have to say about that! I would of though that annual vegetables would have their fungal relationships with annual fungus regenerating from spores?

[janefrt]

This and your cucumber beetle have me wondering . Last fall after removing dead plant matter I put alfalfa pellets on the soil and covered with a couple of inches of shredded leaves . The soil looked great this spring BUT did I create a problem with overwintering cucumber beetles? I actually grew the cucumbers in new beds( and squash in new grow bags) but they found my cucumbers and squash anyway. Could you do a video on how to prepare beds for winter and not create a cozy winter haven for bad bugs?

[pierreshasta]

Hello, personally I like to use the way of "Charles Dowding" (no dig), I add wood chips afterwards.