Happy Friday. I hope you're doing well. We've been talking a lot in the last couple of months about garden planning and specifically when it comes to what you're going to grow.

But alongside that subject of garden planning, we also need to be planning for our soil, which is really the most important thing you can be thinking about when it comes to the health of your

garden. So in today's Q&A, I'm going to bring you a question from Judy that I think a lot of

people have and I had it for a long time. She said, I thought compost was fertilizer and even brewed

some with water last year to put in my garden. Do I need to be

putting something in my garden besides just compost? That is such an excellent

question because it is so easy to get compost and fertilizer mixed up even if

you're talking about organic fertilizer which is what we talk about on this

podcast and there definitely is a difference. Compost is not even if you're talking about organic fertilizer, which is what we talk about on this podcast. And there

definitely is a difference. Compost is not a fertilizer per se, though it can serve in a similar way

that fertilizer does when it comes to our plants. Compost instead is at the very basic form,

the end product of what used to be living. Fertilizers, when

you're adding them to your garden, they are the nutrients themselves. So if you look at

compost in particular, it will have nutrients in it just because it's coming from things that

had nutrients. So it will have some nutrients. But the bigger benefit to compost

is that it also has soil life in it.

And that soil life is what is going to help the plants

to actually take up the nutrients that are in the soil

and also provided through the compost

and any other inputs you may put in your garden. Compost also,

because it is complete organic matter, helps with the soil structure, which will help the plants

take up the nutrients because of the air pathways in the soil itself. It will also help to buffer

...