Bendit wrote:
Hello. I would like to know where in or around Denver I can get organic soil
ammendments to rebuild my vegetable garden.

I have been doing my own compost, but not nearly enough to replenish the
soil for next year.

This year I got screwed. I had purchased "planter's mix" from this small
company, only to find out in the middle of the season that it had ZERO
nitrogen.

I do not want to be stuck like that again next summer.

Do you think that manure and compost bags from Home Depot or Lowes would be
good at all? Now I am paranoid and want to soil test everything I see!

Thanks for any info! CHEERS!

I'd get a big ole mess of municipal yard waste compost now (enough to
cover your garden beds 1-2" deep), windrow it for a month to help it
finish up composting (munie compost is cheap but often half-baked), then
dig it in with bagged manure (at a rate of 10 lbs per 100 sq feet of
beds) before it gets too cold. Because both compost and manure are very
slow in releasing nitrogen, you might want to supplement with a higher
nitrogen fertilizer in the spring. If you want to go organic, fish
emulsion or bloodmeal are good choices (follow directions on packaging).

Finally, next fall you might play around with green mulches/cover
crops--esp. nitrogen fixing ones like vetch or alfalfa.

The irony is that plants cannot actually utilize nutrients in their
organic form--they must be broken down by soil microorganisms into their
inorganic forms. And tilling in half-baked compost can actually do more
short-term harm than good, since as the compost continues to break
down it actuall robs nitrogen from the soil rather than releasing it
(nitrogen draft).