Late winter is a good time to prepare the soil for this year's backyard vegetable garden. The easiest way to bring life back to worn out soil is with a liberal application of compost. The dark-colored, amorphous structure of compost makes it difficult to determine the organic wastes used in the composting process, whether in backyard compost or municipal compost. Compost improves the soil structure of the garden.
Soils vary from sandy to heavy clay.
Mixtures are called loams. Sandy soils tend to be droughty and low in nutrients. Clay soils often drain slowly. Compost will benefit almost all soils, improving the water-holding capacity and nutrient retention of sandy soil and improving the drainage of clay soil. Although the quantities of nutrients in compost tend to be rather low, the nutrients are in organic forms that make them more stable, slowly releasing the nutrients over time for uptake by plant roots.