Compost & Straw Mulch Question

Hello,

Last Fall I laid out newspaper and straw mulch to cover my raised beds and new areas in the ground that I plan to plant in this Spring and I wasn’t able to amend with compost before doing so. I recently got a truck load of compost and I am wondering what would be the best way to apply the compost? Should I remove the straw mulch and spread out the compost on the soil then cover it back up with straw or spread out the compost on top of the straw mulch?

Thank you for your insight and advice in advance.

Follow the least work Path !!!   or eventually the least least work path...instead of paper-straw-mulch, scatter vetch...water, and let the vetch grow and suppress weeds, fix nitrogen and supply organic matter....in the spring cut or crimp the vetch, then plant in it

minimize cost..energy to hall compost, and your time  


Kostas

(just an opinion)

It wouldn't be too much work to rake back what remains of the mulch you applied last fall and put down a thick layer of compost on top of your beds.  

You can either re-use that straw and newspaper mulch, or you can toss it into the compost pile and put down a fresh layer of mulch over the compost layer.  Technically, anything that you put on the soil surface is mulch, so unless you intend to integrate that compost into the soil profile, it's a mulch layer.  And that's good stuff -- I'd minimize soil disturbance and just put the compost on the soil surface.  But I'd put a second mulch layer over the top of that since compost easily dries out and that will kill all the wonderful microbial life in it.

Mollison suggests putting down 2-4" of compost over your mulch and just seeding into that.

I would just lay on the compost and perhaps give the areas a watering after spreading the compost.
There shouldn't be much of that mulching left by now, if there is then I would brew up a compost tea with some molasses added and use that to water once I spread the compost.
Mulch that is thin should be mostly incorporated in around 6 months or less if there is good soil biology already in place.
If you still have most of that previous mulch hanging around, that indicates low numbers of soil microbes are present.

Redhawk