I incorporate it into my soil prior to planting and mix it lightly into my soil with a fork, or I use it as a mulch. I put rough, unfinished compost around my favorite shrubs.

Over the last couple of years I've concentrated more on lasagna composting instead of bin composting. However, compost from the bins is a great material to use for pocket planting -- making a hole in the lasagna, filling the hole with compost, then transplanting or seeding into the pocket.

I also use small amounts of compost as a lasagna layer, often higher up in the layers structure than down near the soil. Figure it's easier for the microherd to flow or fall down with water and gravity, than it is for them to climb or hitchhike up. :)

Finished compost can be a good foliar feed for plants too, when used as compost tea.

All the best,
-Patrick

Usually I spread compost on top of all my beds, before I cover them with a thick layer of shredded leaves in the late fall.

I also mix compost in with potting soil for potted plants.

I will also work compost into the soil when I am planting plugs or shrubs.

If I have enough, I lay compost down in the rows of my garden as I am seeding.

1) mixed in with the soil to improve it
2) on top as mulch to hold moisture and hopefully reduce disease, wilts and blights.
3) made into compost tea and sprayed on my tomatoes and peppers every three weeks or so.

1/3 homemade compost
1/3 peat moss
1/3 vermiculite
---------------
"Mel's Mix" for intensive raised-bed gardening or "Square Foot Gardening" but it also makes an amazing container plant soil as well.

Other uses for compost, for me, are as a lawn topdressing - if finely screened to remove big chunks - or as a way to increase fertility and tilthe to soil I plan to make a bed out of in teh near future.

Red Inorganic Clay + Homemade Compost = Healthy Soil
Red Inorganic Clay + Sand or Gypsum = Bricks or Concrete, respectively, lol...

I use some in planting holes, but mostly on top of the soil. Sometimes I just topdress around a plant, or if I have enough, spread over an entire area or bed. Also, I always try to top that with some other mulch like wood or leaves to keep it moist.

Karen

This is the best question I've seen in this forum in a very long time. Thanks for asking. You will hear about a lot of different applications, which only illustrates how flexible the use of compost is to so many gardeners. Try not to view the answers as conflicting or confusing. Some applications may be regional as well. :)

As a no-till fan, I put compost right on top of the garden beds as soon as I have some that's reasonably ready, much the way one would apply a thin layer of mulch. Sometimes I mix it with some peat moss, mulch or potting mix if I have some left over or handy. I mound it for cukes, melons and squashes as well. It's truly magical stuff. On occasion I have used rough, coarse, and not quite ready compost as mulch in a pinch.

I like to put it as the top layer in a lasagna bed, as it doesn't blow away like leaves, and it looks nicer than old produce or horse manure. Then as the lasagna beds shrink, I top them with compost the next spring. Or if they are sunk further down I put in leaves and maybe horse manure with compost on top.

I violate most rules of growing plants in pots, and mix compost with clay soil and crumbled dried horse manure for an excellent potting soil. I spread compost on top of the ground to improve nutrition and water retention qualities of my soil around flowers and vegies.

In hard to weed areas (where the weeds are strongly attached to the soil) sometimes it is easier to just dig up the soil, weeds and all, fling it someplace else, and fill in the resulting hole with compost.

We only add compost to the lawn in places we spill the compost while transporting it. :-) We make a LOT of compost, but the lawn is not worthy. If you make your lawn healthier you just have to mow more . . .

Marcia

Mulch, soild admendment, fertilizer (throw with a shovel and mulch mow), and baking.

Just kidding about baking, or am I?

I don't think that it cures warts but I haven't tried it yet!

Containers. I like my compost to be not quite finished, it makes for a great container medium - drains well, yet retains moisture. Kay.

Hmmm...I don't use the compost for much besides entertainment and spiritual enlargement, plus a couple bucks for my time. I don't even really know what it looks like, or is supposed to look like, when its done. I like making piles, turning piles, checking heat, and collecting materials. A lot of the time people [i work in a community garden] 'steal' their compost before its done. Whatever, it makes room to make more.

Other people come and take it and put it on their gardens as mulch to overwinter, which I then roto-till in [they ask me to, and I get paid; i'm following orders :)]. It goes well into a hole for planting squash and other heavy feeders. Lots of top / side dressing for corn, which then fertilizes as you water. Compost tea. We put it around trees, in tree holes, and I think they wrapped the trees in it last week when they brought them back from the nursery to plant.

I also use compost to dispose of the various leftovers the hawks leave around the gardens...voles, ground squirrels, and a possum. I could almost hear the herd say 'yummmm' as I slipped that one in.

Sometimes I try to use compost to meet women. That doesn't seem to work very well. Kids like it though, and its a great teaching tool. Build a pile, come back in a week, and wow! it's hot.

And my proudest accomplishment, I use compost to save the neighboring municipality several hundred gallons of diesel that they would otherwise have to burn to haul their leaves to a dump site.