Naga Jolokia wrote:

Many thanks for your answers, suggestions.

I am quite sure that the compost is derived from wood chips, grass
clippings, and leaves. It's not the sewer sludge type through.

Your only problem is one of short arm disease... your arms are too
short to reach your wallet.

In my experience (when I was very young and very foolish) the FREE
"compost" from municipal sources is not compost at all, it's
rotted/fermented organic matter in various levels of doneness,
typically not very done at all... if you can see the wood chips and
discern all the other bits of organic matter it's certainly not
composted or even rotted (composted and fermented are more different
than night and day). Also those wood chips (and other debris) are
collected willy nilly from various sources, most usually
contaminated with nefarious insect larvae, fungi, and quite possibly
toxins, especially toxins from lawn clippings... usually
shredded/chipped branches from roadsides collected by utility
companies and highway departments, but can well be chipped chemically
treated lumber, and even scraped up roadside soil containing oil
spills. The two times I availed myself of the freebies it was
definitively mulch (extremely poor quality mulch), not compost.
Placing it in my beds was a serious mistake, the insects/plant
diseases it harbored nearly destroyed all my shrubs and trees.
Fermented sewage sludge is a lot worse. If you really want compost I
strongly suggest you make your own, or buy bagged *sterilized*
compost. But (like ground meat) it's best to make your own, that's
the only way you'll know what/who is in it. If that FREE compost was
of any quality at all it would not be free, they'd bag it and sell
it... they are using citizen's property for supplimenting municipal
landfill sites.... it's called spreading the wealth around, so when
the inspectors arrive they won't designate your town dump another
Super Fund site.

Per your suggestions, I am going to mix it with some sand to improve
drainage.

Sand needs nothing to improve drainage, sand drains perfectly well on
it's own... adding compost to sand inhibits drainage... compost will
fill the voids between the sand particles. The compost won't last
long but for the short term it will hinder drainage... a lot of sweat
labor for nothing. To improve drainage look towards creating proper
grading, installing culverts, adding drainage ditches, placing
perforated piping, burying shale, etc. Adding compost will not
improve drainage... otherwise folks whose basements flood would get
rid of their sump pumps and spread compost about the basement floor.

I will also try it straight to see if the result is different
or not. I can't use the native soil in my back yard since it's like
pure clay. You need a hammer to break it when it's dry. And when it's
wet, you can't even work on it.

Mixing compost with poor soil will literally do nothing, nada,
zilch... compost will NOT improve soil one iota, certainly not the
kind of soil you describe. Compost is pure organic material that will
continue to decompose until in a very short time (less than a year)
will be totally gone... it will become dust that blows away from wind
and/or washes away from rain. Compost is a very short term
improvement that should be used in direct contact with plant roots on
a very temporary basis, as though it were potting medium. Working
compost into *your* soil is fine if you want to save on gym fees. What
you need, from your own words, is many 10 yard dump truck loads of
quality top soil, enough to cover your entire gardening area at least
six inches deep, preferably a full foot deep... but first tend to any
drainage problems with excavation.

After reading this group for a few years I've discovered that
absolutely no one (not even one person) knows what compost is, they
don't know the difference between compost and mulch... they are not
synonymous, in fact they are the exact opposites... compost is
decomposed organic material that *promotes* plant growth, mulch is any
material that *inhibits* plant growth (mulch is not necessarily
organic).

Free compost... nothing is free... fergedaboudit... t he only solution
to your problem is to grow longer arms.