[quote=UCGal]And Eugene – like you we’re having to augment the soil a lot… Fortunately, we’ve got a lot of good worms in our compost bin – so I’ve got good soil to amend with.
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A compost bin would certainly help, but, for a project of any scale, it would be a drop in the bucket. To take grapes as an example, if you want to turn our SoCal sand into something half-decent, you need at least 10 cubic feet of compost per vine. Your standard compost bin is what, 2-3 cubic feet?

I’ve been buying a lot of manure at HD and making occasional trips to the landfill.