Veggie garden.. We did real well in other "flower bed" places we used for vegetables last year. We have since bought the house so we want to expand the garden to a real one and put flowers back in the beds. I am intending to till it in, and the forty pound bag is about 1 cubic foot.

So it sounds like your native soil isn't too bad. With the half a cubic yard you bought that would give coverage of around half an inch. I'd have no problem with that and if the new plants look like they might need a little pick-me-up, I'd have no issue with adding a little general fertilizer to supplement.

Hopefully 'real' gardeners will jump in with their suggestions.

Good luck

Lloyd

One inch can always be added without much trouble.

Even without adding too much nitrogen? I keep thinking back to what my dad did last year: "we'll if I'm supposed to use this much manure then TWICE that much should be even better" . He got huge, leafy plants that yielded very little....never even got a tomato off of his 8 or so plants.

Your soil needs what it needs and it is best to look at your soil and not ask people that want to sell you something. Start with a good, reliable soil test that will not only tell you your soils pH but why it is what it is as well as the levels of Phosphorus, Potash, Calcium, Magnesium, and the ratio. Then dig in with these simple soil tests,
1) Soil test for organic matter. From that soil sample put enough of the rest to make a 4 inch level in a clear 1 quart jar, with a tight fitting lid. Fill that jar with water and replace the lid, tightly. Shake the jar vigorously and then let it stand for 24 hours. Your soil will settle out according to soil particle size and weight. For example, a good loam will have about 1-3/4 inch (about 45%) of sand on the bottom. about 1 inch (about 25%) of silt next, about 1 inch (25%) of clay above that, and about 1/4 inch (about 5%) of organic matter on the top.

2) Drainage. Dig a hole 1 foot square and 1 foot deep and fill that with water. After that water drains away refill the hole with more water and time how long it takes that to drain away. Anything less than 2 hours and your soil drainsâ too quickly and needs more organic matter to slow that drainage down. Anything over 6 hours and the soil drains too slowly and needs lots of organic matter to speed it up.

3) Tilth. Take a handful of your slightly damp soil and squeeze it tightly. When the pressure is released the soil should hold together in that clump, but when poked with a finger that clump should fall apart.

4) Smell. What does your soil smell like? A pleasant, rich earthy odor? Putrid, offensive, repugnant odor? The more organic matter in your soil the more active the soil bacteria will be and the nicer your soil will smell.

5) Life. How many earthworms per shovel full were there? 5 or more indicates a pretty healthy soil. Fewer than 5, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, indicates a soil that is not healthy.
to see what else your soil might need.

A couple of numbers I've historically used for 'soil amendments':

- composted manure (e.g.Black Kow; 0.5-0.5-0.5) 1" incorporated into the top 6" of soil.

- aged compost, no manure: 2" incorporated into the top 6" of soil.

Those numbers are for single season gardening. If you use the same bed(s) for a full second season, like we do in the warm pats of TX, then you can double it with reapplication in between planting periods.

The weight will depend upon the density, which will mostly be determined by how much moisture is in the bag product. A 50 lb bag of Black Kow is about 0.75-0.80 cu ft; a 40 lb bag of the usual home improvement store compost or manure that is often quite wet is abut 0.5 cu ft. So how much weight depends on the product.

I like to apply new compost as a mulch, then incorporate it later. In that case you can put more on initially because in the 2-3 months, at least, that it sits on the soil it will continued to degrade.

I'll pass along a useful link below - it is to the Colorado Master Gardening Notes on 'Soils, Fertilizers, and Soil Amendments'. Scroll down to soil amendments and pick up the one titled 'Soil Amendments', CMG Notes #241. Also see the others they reference within that note:
#234, Organic Fertilizers (under Fertilizers)
#242, Using Manure in the Home Garden (under Soil Amendments)
and #243, Using Compost in the Home Garden (also under Soil Amendments)

Here is a link that might be useful: Colorado Master Gardening Notes

This post was edited by TXEB on Mon, Apr 15, 13 at 9:23

I came up with about 1/3 of an inch, that would certainly not be too much of any kind of compost to add to the garden.

Yep - at about 0.5 cu. ft. per bag, 15 bags over 300 sq. ft. comes out to 0.3 inches.

If it were mine, I'd be comfortable with up to 3-4X that amount, if it were incorporated fairly evenly in the top 6" of soil.

Putting more of a source of nutrients into soils is never a very good idea since that can create more problems then it would solve. Soils do not "bank" excess nutrients, they simply flow out with the water that drains away and creates pollution somewhere downstream, and the imbalance in nutrients can cause heatlh problems in the plants you are trying to grow which can mean insect pest and plant disease problems.
To know what is needed you need to know what is there and then you can determine what you need.

You also need to take into account the rate of release of the nutrient from the nutrient source, the specific nutrient, and the form in which it is released, and soil composition. In most good soils with sufficient cation exchange capacity (CEC) P is well retained, as are significant amounts of K and many mineral nutrients. The availability of P, Ca, and most metals has a large dependence on soil pH. N is the most mobile and fleeting, but soils can retain N precursors in the form of organic matter that provides for a slow release of N over time. The question for N is whether there enough available in the right form when the plant demands it. Appreciable excesses are never good, and the spillover effect to the surrounding environment can be extremely troublesome.

I would certainly not include compost on a 300-ft garden in the same class as, say, overfertilizing a 10,000 sq ft lawn with granular 29-3-3, as far as pollution potential.