Soil & Compost

I spent a whole weekend digging and sifting yard soil and compost to fill a bed myself, expecting to save money and effort. Here’s the honest math on why it wasn’t worth it.

I believed coffee grounds were some kind of secret ingredient for compost before I started saving them. After a couple of years, here’s what I noticed, and what I still can’t verify.

A bucket sized hole and a garden hose is all it takes to check drainage before filling a new raised bed. I skipped this once, and it cost me an entire Saturday later.

Every spring the soil in our oldest bed sits lower than it did the year before. Here’s what I’ve figured out about where it goes, and what I got wrong trying to explain it.

I built a compost bin out of free pallets two summers ago. Here’s the honest version of how often I turn it, what disappears fast, and what just sits there refusing to become soil.

I filled our fourth raised bed with logs and branches at the bottom and soil on top, then checked back months later to see if it settled the way I expected. It mostly didn’t.