Sign up now for your FREE Newsletter. You will receive a Newsletter twice a month providing tips, techniques, and fun projects for your garden. Sign up now
Sign up now.
You can apply compost to any garden bed once or twice a year. To improve the structure and fertility of poor soil quickly, give it a thorough compost treatment in the fall. Spade it 6 to 12 inches deep.
Vegetable gardens Put compost in the furrows when you sow seeds and in the holes when transplanting seedlings. When the plants begin to grow rapidly, mix compost with equal amounts of soil and spread it on top of the soil.
Flower beds Apply a half-inch-thick layer of finely screened compost as a mulch around all flowering plants when they come up in spring.
Rose bushes When hilling up the soil around rose bushes for winter protection, mix compost with the soil—the roses will get a better start the following spring.
Lawns To renovate an old patchy lawn, dig up the bare spots about 2 inches deep, work in plenty of compost, tamp and rake well, and sow your seed after soaking the patches well.
Containers Twice a year, scratch an inch or so of compost into the soil in pots where houseplants and others are growing.
