Soil vs Compost

So I recently read an article that had this statement.

"You should always use soil for planting your plants. You never plant in compost. Soil is the medium that holds plants in place and provides them with nutrients and water. You cannot plant in compost, as it is recycled dead and dying organic matter."

Is that really the case? Is this a matter of semantics? Is the author referring to UNFINISISHED compost, instead of finished compost/hummus?

Thoughts?

Only the author knows his or her intent.  It is just that person's opinion.

Maybe that person has never planted in finished compost or maybe they tried using unfinished compost and it did not work.

I can tell you for a fact that finished compost is great for planting something in though using finished compost to build the soil is better.

You cannot plant in compost, as it is recycled dead and dying organic matter.

My opinion is that this person needs to study and read Dr. Bryant Redhawk's Soil Series:

https://permies.com/wiki/redhawk-soil

Especially this one:

https://permies.com/t/93911/soil-mother-nature

I plant in pure compost all the time and I've never had an issue.

Anne Miller wrote:
Especially this one:

https://permies.com/t/93911/soil-mother-nature

This is a work of pure genius!

I just came in from planting into pure compost atop our sandy loam.

This is true. Pure compost is to high of levels, of phosphorous, detrimental to plant growth. On my first planting area of corn, I put to much phosphorus down in one section, always with de-pleated growth patterns. It’s fine to have to much potassium, though, things like alphalpha pellets, have little P. There are articles about organic farms, with continual use of manure, always ending with to much phosphorus, therefore not as good growth after times. With feather meal to expensive to be used. I’ve also seen where no till heavy mulch patterns, lead to to much P, a nearby location, that no longer operates on that soil.

It seems like folks planting directly into compost are basically covering seeds or transplants’ roots with a top dressing, no? I do this as well, digging down minimally and sometimes terracing the planting on slopes with rocks or logs, which hold the soil but allow drainage. However, with perennials and tree transplants, I do subscribe to the Mike McGrath analogy of a planting a tree into a hole full of amendments and/or compost being like giving a recently graduated young-adult child a cushy room, entertainment systems and spending money while simultaneously wondering “when are they gonna get a job and move out on their own?” The pampered trees’ roots may never leave the cushy planting hole. Amending the planting hole without allowing for drainage can also create a drainage sink in clay soils, causing root rot. Mr. McGrath recommends instead top-dressing any compost or amendments (organic only of course as former editor of Rodale Magazine) after digging s wide but not too deep planting hole, with the root flare just visible above the surface of everything after planting, and no mulch within a foot of the trunk. This has worked for me pretty well so far, and emulates natural processes.

I grow in nothing but compost and it works out just fine for me. It may be just ‘dead organic matter’ technically, but the microbes, insects, worms and fungi are all very much alive, as are the plants 😊

Unless you are growing in containers, it's hard to see how this would be a problem.
I compost in place, in raised beds.
The soil under and around the beds get the run off from them.
Soil life mixes the compost into the earth below.
Plants roots and mycelium grow throughout the bed and into the earth.
If topsoil isn't made up of decaying organic materials, comingled with mineral soils by the actions of living things, what is it?

We live on the Saskatchewan prairie where the weather is best classified as semi-arid to arid all summer long... hot sun and drying wind blowing almost constantly. On top of that, our soil is very sandy. We also raise horses and, you guessed it, have LOTS of horse manure to compost. We pile it up every fall to age and use 2 yr old manure (looks like black dirt by this time), unmixed with anything else, not even the sandy 'soil', to grow our garden and plant our trees and berry bushes. I tried for years to grow a vegetable garden before the horses came along, but everything dried out too quickly and, on a well, our watering just couldn't keep up. Now I have a bountiful garden ever year, including tomatoes and other flowering plants, all growing in raised beds filled with aged horse manure and nothing else.  I've read many times that horse manure is too rich in nitrogen to do this, but it's what I have to use and the results have been wonderful.

I looked up the original article, and the author was talking about garden plants rather than trees or the like.  I disagree with her.  Nearly ever year I have volunteer plants, usually squash, pop up and grow in my compost heap.  I don't put soil in my compost, and the squash always grows wonderfully if I don't need that particular pile and just let it grow.  I also have plants that I grow in containers in 100% compost and they do great.

Well, from what I've observed, there is compost and then there is compost.

I have things that grow out of my compost piles all the time. It's always kind of coarse, filled with chopped up stalks that don't pack well, it's never entirely finished, and I work hard to keep it aerobic. So it's basically proto-soil.

However, commercial compost (especially shipped in plastic bags) is usable for many things, but it tends to be packed in tight, stored a long while, and it's sour and anaerobic. The same is true of the industrial scale municipal compost I get for free, in bulk. You really can't plant directly in this kind of compost: it needs to be mixed with other components to make living soil. And then it works fine.

A scientist (Armstrong who invented AM & FM) once said that we substitute words for ideas and then debate the words.  I just saw a video trying to make a huge point about the difference between dirt and soil.  Of course the outcome of any debate is largely dependent upon the definitions we provide to the words.

I see a lot of 'compost' these days is dressed up small wood chips.  Then sometimes rained with chemicals.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:
However, commercial compost (especially shipped in plastic bags) is usable for many things, but it tends to be packed in tight, stored a long while, and it's sour and anaerobic. The same is true of the industrial scale municipal compost I get for free, in bulk. You really can't plant directly in this kind of compost: it needs to be mixed with other components to make living soil. And then it works fine.

Thank you, Douglas, for this explanation.

So it seems that maybe the author of that article has never used or made their own compost.

I have only planted in compost we made and I am not sure we have ever bought commercial compost so I have no experience with that.