What I would do is to pile your compost where you want it to go, but wait until before planting, when you're mixing in organic fertilizer, to cultivate. That saves unnecessary wear and tear on the soil, and meanwhile the piles may provide habitat for night crawlers, etc.

First off I'm not a gardener. Were your existing large bins filled as batch or continuous? If batch, I am going to expect a 50-60% reduction in volume by the time it's finished. If continuous, not so much reduction as some has already taken place. Is your garden for vegetables? I've heard that veggies are more demanding of nutrients and stuff. Do you till a lot? As it is your bins have a volume of 16 CY or so if filled. Shrinkage could take that down to as low as 8 CY or so but more likely into the 12 CY range. To cover a garden of your size with 1 inch of finished compost you would need just over 13 CY of finished compost. One inch doesn't sound like a lot but it should be sufficient if the compost has decent numbers and the garden soil wasn't dead to begin with. And with 5 of 7 years having compost added I would suspect your garden is in pretty decent shape. I don't think even 2 inches would cause any harm but it might be more than you require. Your compost ingredients sound fine to me with the caveat that the HM came from healthy animals. Lloyd

Back in the olden days when Sir Albert Howard wrote about the Hunzas farming practices they made compost by mixing 3 parts vegetative waste to 1 part manure and is just what Sir Albert proposed every one else use. However today we know that is is not necessary to use manure, and many people do not have access to any even though there are more of those animals around to day then back then. There are a number of other Nitrogen sources you can use other than animal manure and some people do have good results, they think, using synthetic fertilizers as the N source.

Thanks, everyone! Barb, I've collected numerous bags from Starbuck's so far but they don't save it regularly... they throw it all away!!! What a travesty! I did a little research and dbm2009 is right that adding already composted material will provide more of the micro-organisms that break stuff down. tiffy_z5_6_can, I'm in Atlanta... Unfortunately, I'm about four hours to the beach or else I'd be all over the seaweed!!! I did, however, find a horse rescue farm nearby that gives away manure for free!!!! Heading there tomorrow to pick up a few bags of it. My wife is thrilled!!!