40 cubic yards of it.  We didn’t know how much that was either.  Well, it’s two dump trucks full.  TWO.

Our soil... is dead.  We bought a soil test kit, which you can buy in most garden stores and seed shops (see “Links” above).  And I measured the Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Potash, and Ph.  Ph was a-ok (you want to be somewhere between 6.0 & 7.5 for most plants) - we are at 6.5.  Phosphorous and Potash are a little low, but still in the ok range.  Nitrogen... well, the test liquid is supposed to turn pink.  Not a bit of pink.  I did it twice, in two totally different spots in the yard.  Nada.

So I researched.  Composting is good.  But we just moved, so we have no compost.  Artificial fertilizer - not our thing - plus our garden is pretty big, so that’s a lot of chemicals.  And then I was driving down the freeway and I saw out of the corner of my eye a place that looked like it sold piles of dirt.  I quickly got off the freeway and went to investigate.

The guy was awesome.  Alex took me around to the different types of compost and soil he had, had me touch and smell it (to see that it didn’t smell like the dump, nor a cow feed lot from the manure).  I talked him into a lower price because we were going to need a fair amount.  How much, I had NO idea (see below for his calculations).  And which type, I had NO idea:  though I narrowed it down to bark compost, mushroom compost, or a mixture of several things Alex called “soil.”  Mmmm... soil.  Sounded good to just put a gigantic layer of soil across the garden and call it done.  But it was more expensive.  I’d read that bark compost sucks nitrogen out of the soil until it has been composted for 2-3 years.  So I settled on mushroom compost, which contained chicken and steer manure (good sources of nitrogen).  Using his calculations and our budget as a guide, I went for 30 cubic yards.  But it was cheaper to get a “full load” of 40 cubic yards, so why not go all the way. 

And there we go.  It was delivered 2 days later.  We had the driver dump most of the stuff next to the main part of the yard, and a small pile he put off to the side, to store for the future.