Frequently Asked Questions

To calculate the volume amount of material that you may want, we recommend using the material calculator. You are also welcome to phone us and we would love to help you calculate the answer to your question. We recommend using a depth ranging between 2 and 4 inches, followed by tilling as deep as is possible. The deeper you are able to incorporate the compost, the deeper your improved root zone for your plants will be and the greater your water bill savings as well.

Yes, our compost, like any good quality compost should have the sweet musky smell of freshly turned garden soil. Composts that are not finished with the composting process will have a foul smell like any decomposing organic matter or manure.  These foul smelling materials are to be avoided. Smell is an indication of quality.  Pleasant smells are good, foul smells are a sign of an unbalanced and mismanaged compost recipe.

Yes, we monitor our compost pile temperatures to insure that they exceed a temperature of 135 degrees for three days, which ensures that the unwanted weed seeds are sterilized. This is one of the greatest differences between weed free composts and weed burdened manure.

We monitor our compost piles to insure that their temperatures exceed 135 degrees for a minimum period of three days. This process ensures that the harmful pathogens found in the beginning ingredients are destroyed by heat from the composting process.

Compost is intended to improve the condition of a soil. When a compost is rich in nutrients and is added to a soil at an excessive amount it may well harm the plants. This is good reason that compost should never be used at a percentage of higher than 50% when amending a soil. Also good reason that compost should be evenly spread and thoroughly incorporated into the soil being amended.

No, compost is meant to be used as an amendment to the soil rather than as a soil or as a planting media. Compost must be blended, tilled or mixed into another soil for successful results.

The origin of ingredients that we begin our compost piles with is very important to us. We choose to work with only farms that are paid a premium to abstain from the use of synthetic hormones such as rBST, within their herds. We seek out carbon sources (sawdust, straw, hay) that only come from clean consistent sources. Some competing composts are derived from yard waste or biosolids which can contain high amounts of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides or heavy metal contamination. Our goal in composting is to provide a compost that will benefit our customer, rather than pawn off your neighbors' waste.

The compost we provide to you as a customer is not certified organic. We do follow the required protocol for producing organic compost, but we choose not to register as a certified organic compost because of the high cost of registration. You may be suprised to find out that the standards for producing a certified organic compost have little to do with where the parent material comes from and more to do with the processing of that material. For example an organic compost must be turned a minimum number of times, maintain a pathogen killing temperature of 135 degrees for a minimum number of days. Look for our article "How to Choose a Good Compost." We do sell our compost to several certified organic produce farms.

By choosing a mulch that is designed to stay in place and then installing it according to the recommendations, you will extend the life of your mulch to it's maximum. For more information on this subject take a look at an article entitled "How to Make Your Mulch Last for Three Years" found in our article section on our home page.

We recommend a depth of 3 inches for the best results. For further information see our article entitled "How to Make Your Mulch Last for Three Years." To calculate the volume of mulch needed for your flower beds utilize the material calculator below or phone us.

Color Enriched Mulch should last for several years, but you probably want to begin your applications in the spring, when you will be tidying up your gardens and lawn. Spring is the preferred time, so that you can enjoy the beauty all spring and summer. Heartland Enriched Colorant allows you to do that.

The blower service is managed by one or two men, depending upon the size and scope of the mulch spreading project. Generally one man spreads the mulch with the hose and one man moves the hose into position and tidies up behind the spreading process.

Some differences between certified organic standards and nutrient dense standards are as follows. Certified organic standards are a list of practices that a grower must NOT perform. Example, no herbicides, no pesticides, no fungicides, no chemicals, etc. With this standard it is possible, even probable, for a pink tomato to be presented at market with a respectable label. Nutrient dense standards are an outcome based standard. A grower's product must meet a threshhold standard for mineral content (nutritional value) in order to carry this label. If the food was grown with natural or organic rules and yet has little nutritional value, it is considered poor quality. Nutrient dense standards are often based on food nutritional values from the 1940's, before our nation's soils began depleting. For more on this subject see our article "Organic vs Nutrient dense, Both And."

The term "Nutrient Dense" was introduced by Ardin Anderson, author of Real Food, Real Medicine, a doctor who resides in the midwest. Nutrient Dense refers to the nutritional quality of a particular food. For example if results of laboratory testing show that the mineral content (along with other key items) reaches levels that are determined and fixed standards, then the food is said to be a nutrient dense food.

We make our best effort to provide you, our customer, with a garden soil that will make your project successful. Each soil blend is intended to be used in a general area of gardening for best results. That said, many gardeners have trade secrets that they love to employ with great tact and care. We encourage you to take the good soils that we provide and build upon them if you so wish. Be careful and have fun.

No, soil mixes are not recommended for filling small to medium pots. We recommend that in the case of filling any kind of container intended for potted plants that you use a container mix, ours or a garden center's. Our container mix, our square foot gardening mix, or our garden soil recipe #5 work very well for container gardening. When a topsoil, amended topsoil, or commercial planting mix is used in a small container the plant suffers from a lack of oxygen and water due to the heavy nature of an actual soil. Because of the density and weight of a topsoil, it is far superior to use a potting media, which is significantly lighter, providing a great deal more porosity for channeling water and oxygen to the roots of the potted plant. Soil mixes (containing topsoil) are intended for filling raised beds, flower beds, gardens, and any other large bed for the growing of outdoor plants (vegetables, flowers, trees, shrubs, annuals and perennials alike).

We encourage you to utilize the material calculator below for fast and easy answers to this question. The material calculator will ask you for the basic dimensions of your project and is able to provide you with reliable answers. Keep in mind that soil will settle a small amount over time, because of this it is wise to over fill at roughly 10%. We would also be glad to work through your project with you as well. Feel free to phone us.

We have a 70,000 yard stockpile that is a deposit from wind erosion on a farm that has grown wheat for the past several decades. We do not use any synthetic herbicides, pesticides, or fungicides on or near our stockpile of topsoil. The farm that the topsoil deposit was removed from is currently still one of the highest producing wheat farms in the Mead Colorado area. We do not accept dirt at random from contractors or construction sites as is the practice of many other topsoil suppliers. Our topsoil is not registered as an organic topsoil with any regulatory agency, although we do practice the standards set forth by several of them. We value and are proud of the topsoil that we utilize in our soil blends.