Improving your garden soil

As you start planning your flower and vegetable gardens, it's a good idea to also think about improving your soil to get the most out of your gardening efforts. But what is the best thing to use to improve your soil, compost or peat moss?

Compost will improve your soil texture as well as add nutrients. Peat moss will improve your soil texture also, but it won't help with nutrients, and it is acidic which many garden soils don't need. Also, peat moss doesn't work well as a mulch, as it will take water from the soil, and form a crust that water cannot penetrate.

The best thing to do is add peat moss to your compost pile, to get the benefit from the compost's nutrients, and the peat moss's water-holding benefits.