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Old June 16, 2008   #4
TZ-OH6
Tomatovillian™
 
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Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Mid-Ohio
Posts: 847
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Compost should be fluffy unless what you have is wet and compacted. If so it should loosen up when you work it.

I'm not sure what you mean by soil looking like dirt. We grow lots of things in dirt around here. There is a whole big corn field of dirt across the road. The trouble is when the dirt looks like gravel, sand or clay.


I would recommend working the native soil into the compost for two reasons. One is that it will increase your volume/root zone depth, and two it can provide additional minerals not found in the compost due to presence absence of those minerals as well as physical properties (surface charge etc) of silt and clay particles.



About the only reason I can think of not to dig up the bottom of a raised bed, is because of a hard rocky/clay pick-ax subsoil.
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