ARS Landscape Materials and Supply opened its fall soil amendment ordering window on September 28, setting aside a block of its Arvada delivery calendar for compost and soil orders placed ahead of winter. The window is scheduled to close October 31.

Fall bed preparation runs in a fixed sequence. Amendment is spread over a bed, worked down into the existing soil, and left through the winter, so that it has settled before anything is planted into it the following spring. Scheduling the material is the part of that sequence and the window applies through late-November.

The season carries a hard outer bound. NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, in the 1991-2020 U.S. Climate Normals, gives October 9 as the median date of the first autumn low of 32 degrees Fahrenheit at Denver International Airport, and 156 days as the median growing season length at that station. Beds are worked in progressively colder soil after that date, and once the ground freezes the work waits until spring.

Colorado State University Extension addresses application rates in its fact sheet Choosing a Soil Amendment, published in June 2000 and last reviewed in May 2024. It states that three cubic yards of compost covers 1,000 square feet to a depth of approximately one inch, and recommends three to four inches of compost incorporated eight to twelve inches deep for a new vegetable or flower garden, against roughly a quarter inch a year on an established one. At that rate a new bed of 1,000 square feet works out to between nine and twelve cubic yards.

"Fall orders move at a different speed than spring orders," said Rina Bindi, Owner of ARS Landscape Materials and Supply. "Nobody is stacked up waiting, and the material goes in while there is still time to work it down before the ground hardens. Putting dates on that was mostly about making it easier to plan around."

Fall amendment orders placed with ARS Landscape Materials & Supply draw on a soil and compost line that the company's catalog lists as six products. The company composts its garden mix for three full years before sale. The company states that the extended cycle allows the organic material to stabilize before it leaves the yard. The same line carries compost, screened topsoil, planter's mix, and screened fill dirt.

ARS delivers landscape material by the cubic yard directly to residential and commercial properties, and customers may also load at the yard. Applied at the rate the fact sheet gives, two new beds of 1,000 square feet each require between 18 and 24 cubic yards. An established bed maintained at roughly a quarter inch a year works out to about three-quarters of a cubic yard over the same area.

The same fact sheet notes that an amendment must be mixed thoroughly into the soil to do its work, and that material merely buried or left on the surface is less effective and can interfere with water and air movement and root growth. It gives 4 to 5 percent organic matter as the level most landscape and garden soils should reach. It also states that fresh manure must go down at least four months before harvest for vegetables in direct contact with soil, which in practice makes it a fall application for the following spring's garden.

ARS Landscape Materials and Supply has operated in the Denver area since 2010. Customers ordering for fall preparation include homeowners, community gardeners, and landscape contractors working ahead of the planting season. Amendment is sold by the cubic yard, so a bed measured in square feet becomes an order only once the depth is fixed.

ARS Landscape Materials and Supply is a bulk landscape material supplier based in Arvada, Colorado. The company has operated in the Denver area since 2010 and delivers soil, compost, mulch, rock, sand, and stone by the cubic yard to residential and commercial customers, in addition to offering excavation and grading services. For more information, visit the company website.

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For more information about ARS Landscape Materials and Supply, contact the company here:

ARS Landscape Materials and Supply
Rina BIndi
303-431-4675
gotdirt@arslandscapematerialsandsupply.com
9470 Indiana Street
Arvada, CO 80007