Question 1. That depends. How nutritious is the soil you have? This is what a good, reliable soil test tells you, it is a tool that helps guide you in getting your soil inot a good, healthy condition. While you want to have on hand, in the soil, enough of and balanced nutrients you do not want to add more then enough since that excess can simply flow out of the soil and pollute the ground water and eventually the streams and lakes around us.
Question 2. All manures can have disease pathogens, animal and human. If care is used when they are applied there should be no problems from using manures in your garden. If manures are to be used in the vegetable garden apply them in the fall, not just before planting in the spring, and mulch to keep any potential disease pathogens from being splashed onto the food you are growing. Simple precautions, such as proper washing, go a long way toward preventing diseases.
Question 3. In Canada there is a product called "Black Earth" sold that is humic acid, the residual organic matter that the Soil Food Web leaves alone as long as there is enough good stuff for them to munch on. You get humic acid in your soil by adding organic matter so there is little reason to spend you money on that. Same thing with "Top Soil". That can be good stuff or it can be junk since there is nothing to tell you what you are buying except that it is the top 4 to 6 inches of soil from someplace. Purchasing bagged products can be challanging since you really do not know what you are getting and there is nothing that requires the seller to be honest about what they are selling. I find that if I need to buy a bag of something I can purchase one bag, take it home and look at it and decide of it is really what I want before buying more.
Question 4. I do not know, for sure, what Black Earth is but similar products here are soil and soil is not good in containers since it compacts too much and does not drain very well unless large amounts of something to promote drainage is added.

What you want in your soil is a level of organic matter of about 6 to 8 percent, a soil ph of between 6.2 to 6.8, balanced nutrients. A good reliable soil test can provide much of that information. I am not sure if AgCanada does soil testing but they should be able to help you find someone that will. In addition you might want to use these simple soil tests,
1) Structure. 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. 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 drains� 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 where your soil is heading.

As Kimmsr said, manure should be applied in the fall, not while planting IF it is barnyard manure.

The bagged manure is safe to use anytime. I have been using both for decades, and have never had a health concern.

How large is your garden?
I bought two fifty pound bags of humic acid, Azomite and green sand which I either mix in the soil as I plant, or for the leaves I use to cover my potatoes just broad cast over the bed although that is more for turning under with the leaves in the fall than a quick boost of any sort.

When they are gone I may or may not replace them to keep in reserve, mostly for the flowers, as this fall I will be putting trailer loads of barnyard sheep manure in the gardens so that should be good for awhile.

The soil in my rose garden also bakes into bricks in the hot sun but there I have kept it covered with either Eucalyptus mulch or more recently Cocoa Bean hulls to keep it moist which it does well even though the soil is still darned hard.

Don't put the leaves over the garden in the fall, that is a waste. Bag them and use them in the spring. I pick up extra leaves in the fall for my roses, a lot, but I use them and bags I had in reserve to cover my potatoes or even just the ground between rows during the summer. It does an excellant job of keeping the ground moist.

Use potting soil in pots as I have very sandy soil in one garden and learned it is just not worth the annoyance of trying get it to work in pots.
If you are going to go the compost route follow what others have tried but until then I personally would stay away from wood mulch unless you can use eucalyptus which is a whole different story from any others.

You said you do not want to get scientific which is fine but a soil test, even a home kit one is not a bad idea; whereas at the same time I leaarned from farmers who knew what worked and what did not so if you know anyone who farms in that soil do not be afraid to ask questions.

Q 1: That might be enough but if you are rehabbing a sandy soil you may want to use more organic matter the first couple of years. Then it's maintenance.

Q2: Yes, and I tend to agree with RpR on the bagged manure compost. Fresh manure, different story, and kimmsr is right about that.

Q3: I'm not familiar with Black Earth but it sounds like compost. All composts are not the same, and in fact it's good to use a variety of ingredients if you make your own, or a variety of products if you buy. Composting *tends* to bring various ingredients toward a common center, but it doesn't achieve that 100%.

Q4: Several on this forum have grown perfectly good potted plants in defiance of conventional container growing wisdom. Try it out and see what happens.

RpR, why is piling leaves on the garden in fall a waste? In cold climates (like Canada) they will pretty much sit there anyway, but they will begin to break down better than if left dry in a bag. And they will protect the soil from freeze-thaw which is good for the worms. I went the opposite way a couple years ago and started taking my leaves OUT of the bags and piling them up. I use them for mulch or to fill the compost bins in the spring. YMMV.

He/she is not quite as far north as I am, but leaving leaves on the ground has no real purpose.
The frost will go just as deaping under the leaves, UNLESS, on is make piles feet deep ten feet around.

I have had leaf piles that simply never got raked up because I had enough already and it snowed. All it did was make the ground under the pile wet and harder to work in the spring.
Turning leaves directly into the ground in the spring as my father told me not do simply makes hard sloppy soil that is miseralbe to work with and as he/she already has hard ground that is one of the worst things to do if that is a problem.

Now in the summer when hard ground dries and gets too brick like, putting leaves over the tilled soil helps keep it moist and keeps it more loose as it also protects from driving rains such as we had up here lately.
I went into my garden to see why some of my potatoes were not up yet and simply had to pull the leaves away and dig down a few inches with my hands to fine the potatoes sitting just starting to sprout.
If that were soil that consisted of leaves having been tilled into the soil before planting I would have been using a shovel, this comes from experience.

In the fall when the leaves have partly decomposed then it is best not to roto-till them in but take a sand shovel and turn the garden over so it looks like a plowed field minus the furrows.

Freeze-thaw is what one wants as it helps break up the soil making it far easier to work with in the spring

I used to and still do to some degree, take the leaves off of my roses and put them in a long term compost pile which is better than haveinga partly dry, partly wet pile sitting on the garden which will be have to be dealth with in one manner or another in the spring to use the garden.

RpR makes sense for using leaves...in areas north of Dixie. Heavy leaves on top of the soil in springs invites a cold soggy mess in spring. Turning leaves into the soil in spring...not good in God's Country either. I mulch finely leaves and apply in fall and also add leaf mold compost in late summer or fall.

You are correct to believe that feeding the soil is feeding the plants but I also believe that feeding the earthworms will feed the soil and therefore the plants. Well fed earthworms produce a very large amount of castings which are a wonderful soil amendment. I feed the worms by burying kitchen veggie trimmings between the plants and the worms quickly use those. I also use alfalfa pellets, usually in tea form which helps make a healthy environment for the worms and is good for the plants. Can you obtain more grass clippings and leaves from other people? They are both excellent to use as mulch which will break down over time. Worms love organic grass clippings.

Is there a reason you don't want to compost yet? There are many ways to compost besides using a 'composter'. I have a compost pile which I've found the easiest way to compost after trying many other systems.

Is there a compost facility near you where you can obtain good compost? I am personally a bit leery of bagged products as it's difficult to know the quality and I think there are less expensive ways to amend garden soil.

Have you found the FAQ page on this forum? Lots of good info there.

Here is a link that might be useful: FAQ page

I have piled up leaves, shredded and unshredded, on soils in Michgan, Indiana, and Ohio and left them on that soil over the winter and have not found the soil under those leaves in any of those gardens to be frozen after the winter had past. What I did find is the the clay soils were much more workable after having the leaves piled over then before, you could easily insert a garden fork into the clay after a winter of being covered with leaves when you could not get that same garden fork to penetrate before the leaves were piled on. Maybe it was because I piled those leaves more than ankle deep (about 8 inches thick) and that insulated the soil from freezing, although a pile 3 feet in diameter should not.

My experience agrees with Kimm on this. Soil under leaves doesn't freeze hard around here. Excavators scrape forest cover in the middle of winter and dig cellar holes. The reason is that the soils generally are very well-drained so there isn't water in the top foot under the duff to freeze solid, as is common in other places.

In a heavy soil the leaf layer would help to hold water at the bottom of the pile which would eventually freeze solid and then stay frozen longer since the leaf layer then insulates the ice in the spring from the sun. Yet another big difference caused by soil type.

Wow, thank you so much for all the replies!!

I didn't know that about the leaves, I thought I was helping the soil by raking them on. Usually, they all seem to decompose over the winter because by Springtime, there are barely any left on the garden. I don't end up with a soggy mess but I never thought that it might be making the ground harder. I suppose it makes sense to save them and use them in the summer, rather than let them break down over the winter. I will try to bag them this year. I always thought of freeze-thaw as a bad thing, that threatened roses and the flat pathways etc ... I never knew that it helped to break up the soil to make it easier to work, thanks!!

I am talking about the bagged manure. We don't have access to fresh manure from a farm so bagged it is. I'm glad to hear that it would be just as safe in the veggie gardens.

Also glad to hear that 1/2 inch of manure is enough for maintenance purposes. I do try to put more in problem areas, and I always work some into the soil again when I plant something new.

So outdoor potting soil would have enough nutrients in it to feed tomato plants? That is also good to know, I never thought potting soil had enough to feed plants larger than seedlings!

I'm not sure what the exact size of the garden is ... it is broken up into a lot of different smaller areas. The vegetable gardens are 6 squares of about 6x10 feet ... the flower gardens are much harder to tell but add up to more than double that space at least ...

The bag says that Black Earth is good for adding to gardens. It doesn't say why and none of the employees at the stores around here seem to know exactly what it does or what it is for. I think you're right that it has humic acid in it ... sounds familiar ... I guess that means there is little point in buying it and I should stick to the manure.

I don't want to get too scientific just because I don't really understand all the details ... I'm not sure how to go about getting a soil test around here, but perhaps I'll check in the local garden centers to see if they have a home test kit. Do you have to send that out to someone afterwards, or can you figure out the results yourself?

As far as those simple soil tests, we've had crazy storms here the past couple days so I'll have to wait to test some of those things. We do pretty well with earthworms, and robins love our garden because they get a good buffet! As far as tilth and smell, I know I'm still on the clay-ish side in many places, but I can tell that it is getting better. Structure and drainage I'd have to check.

As far as having our own composter ... I'd love to some day soon. But there are still a million things we have to fix outside and putting in a composter will have to wait a little while until I make more headway on that outdoor "to do" list. Plus, I'd like to know a bit more about it first.

As far as mulches, I've never seen Eucalyptus around here. I've seen cocoa but we have dogs around and I don't want to risk that they eat any of it. And since I'm stuck with our leaves that fall, and any grass we cut (which do go in the garden, but not enough to mulch the whole thing), I'm looking for a good mulch for both the flower and veggie areas. I am still trying to find a way to get some rotting hay or straw to use as a mulch in the veggie gardens so I don't have to use woodchips there but if not, I might be stuck with the wood.

SO, if I intend to put down a layer of manure (about 1/2-1 inch deep) over the soil this summer, some bloodmeal and bone meal, then a layer of newspaper (to keep the weeds down and to break down into the soil over time), and then a layer of cedar chip wood mulch over top of the newspaper... does this sound like a workable plan?

Whether your soil would need that 1/2 inch of manure once, once a year, or more often depends on what soil nutrients are there, and a good reliable soil test is the only way to know. AgCanada, oriented more toward commercial agriculture, does not do soil testing but they should be able to direct you to a soil testing lab.

Interesting side discussion on leaves...my last word is that if it seems like piling them up for winter is not good for your particular conditions, you can always pile them in a leaf corral or wire bin and let them get a start on making leaf mould over the winter. Whatever works for you. I have clay and it seems keeping it covered somewhat does make it easier to work in the spring. YMMV.

Tox, so you cover the clay with leaves to keep it moist and it won't get as hard? It would be hard to get so many leaves.

Tox I would like to know just what you consider clay.

If I have a wet spot and till it, clay acts just like the stuff you used to by as a kid, gummy sticky and impossible to work as all you get a large balls of wet muddy clay.

If you wait till spring and turn it over wet, when it drys you are fighting the equivalent of large dryed bricks that breaking to small dried bricka and turn a two hour job into a four hour job.

I have dealt with this stuff since I was a kid and my father said I could help him in the garden.
I made the mistake of turning the leaves into the wet garden one spring, as my dad said never to do(I actually did it again twenty years later, and by golly same misery) and spent the rest of the summer dealing with chunks of wet leaves and dirt instead of crumbly soil.

I don't think you have ever dealth with heavy clay or black gumbo as it is called here and when you get below the black gumbo there is yellow clay that is twice as bad.

I have the advantage that in the veg. garden I have worked in so many yards cubed of leaves, straw and weed piles three feet high and sheep manure that it is now the same dark brown color of my hair when dry, but in the rose garden all that has been added is left over leaves, Eucalytus mulch and now cocoa beans that the stuff is black as the ace of spades (when a chunk dries and breaks open it is actually a dark gunmetal grey-black, and when I roto-tilled between the rose bushes because I was annoyed that when I stuck a three sixteenth inch diameter weeder into the soil to get a big dandelion it would bend the weeder) I now have a weed free rose garden with ground that consists of thousands of inch to half inch diameter balls, for lack of a better description, but the roses are damned healthy.

I was under the impression that even if the soil was ok at the moment, the more you grow, the more you'd have to ammend because the vegetables (or flowers) would suck up nutrients from the soil ... so you had to keep replacing it every year in some way anyways. Hence adding more manure every year ... I'm just not sure how much would be enough to keep everything healthy and happily growing. I guess that is what the soil test would tell me (among other things) and I will be looking into how I can get that done fairly simply around my area.

RpR, I have turned over my soil too early in the Spring before ... when it was still fairly wet ... and I agree, I certainly hope I never make that mistake again. The spring itch is hard to resist, but I learned that year to wait until the soil dries out more before starting to work it or else, come July/August, it is hard and stiff as a brick.

I hope to someday have the kind of garden where I have worked in enough organic ammendments over the years that I can pull weeds and get the roots without having to use a shovel to get them all :) That I could just pull and they would come out. There are some areas that I can do that, after a good rain, and it makes me want to make the soil all over the garden better!!

We bought this property March 2011. I began then collecting leaves, grass clippings, etc.; where these were placed I now find earthworms and the soil is easier to work. We have been in a drought for several years and last year we had many days that were 100+ so the soil that was not covered baked. I bought 100 bags of cypress mulch; this year I have added another 40 bags thus far plus over 100 garbage bags of grass clippings/leaves. I'm slowly seeing changes.

Here in Texas mulch makes a big difference in the soil.

Mulching soils, with proper organic matterial, can be beneficial for any soil since a good, organic mulch will eventually add organic matter to the soil. Most every soil I have looked at in the last 50 plus years would benefit from the addition of organic matter either as soil amendment or as mulch. I have looked at soils in California, Washington, Oklahoma, Tennesee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, New York, Ontario, British Columbia, and others I have forgotten and I have worked many of them. I still correspond with people that live in many of those areas, as well as other parts of the world, and they all tell me that adding organic matter to their soils is the only thing that makes much difference and sometimes is the only thing that allows them to grow plants.
To make a good healthy soil that will grow strong and healthy plants add organic matter to your soil so the humus level is about 6 to 8 percent.

I agree with wayne_5,tox & RpR mostly because I have never visited those places. I however, have done everything you said not to do with leaves, Here in South Carolina With no problem. So the only thing I can say is that I add compost after every crop in my beds. Most of my beds (unlike yours)have plant in them year around. Winter greens,onions,garlic & perennial veggies. I always add compost & till, before replanting. Even no-till gardener can add compost to the bed or top dress after planting.
I think once a season is best, but I do not think 8% compost is enough.

Cziga:
What do you work your garden with and how large is it?

This fall, if you can, it is easy for me and some others but may not be for you, get manure, it does not have to be well rotted and put it on four to six inches deep (When I shovel mine out of the trailer it is eight inches deep in places and barely one in others depending on how far I can throw it) and turn with a shovel, or plow if you can, it under and let it sit that way till spring.

I guarantee you next year, hard to work or not, you will have good crops, and for quite some years after.
In my garden after a heavy rain or watering I can simply pull most weeds with my fingers but when dry you use a weeder or waste one's time.
This weekend I spent twelve hours on my hands and knees weeding but with the drought we had last fall and this winter, after a rain I thought it would be easy weeding but I found out that the first three inches were nice but under that, when I used a trowl to to move some corn plants, it was wet looking dried bricks.

Unless you actually replace soil, or bring in very, very large amounts of plant material to work in, you will never have the type you see on the gardening shows.

RpR, I of course agree with you about digging or tilling clay when wet - usually a disaster! My garden started out as that kind of very heavy (tan to brown) clay. It is now much better textured due mostly to organic matter addition, so leaving piles of leaves over winter is not such a problem. I can remove them and after a few sunny days it's OK to dig. Won't be true everywhere.

The activity of the worms underneath during the fall and early spring is well worth it in my book. YMMV.

Off on a tangent, but: mulch is very important over clay in summer. I've found the pounding Midwestern thunderstorms pack down clay that was fluffed by the winter freezing and thawing and/or spring digging. Mulch absorbs the impact of the raindrops. I've seen it happen side by side in the same bed with no foot traffic. By midsummer the unmulched part was a couple inches lower and hard as rock.

Tox:
You are dead on about what the pounding rains do.

Putting mulch over freshly dug or as freshly as possible, is an extremely good idea but watch out if you have to walk on that mulch as one may suddenly be ankle deep although depending on what you put down, mine leaves, it may save you from having to scrape muck off of one's foot.