Topsoil is an essential product to purchase at the beginning of any gardening or landscaping effort. It is often times likened to compost, but how you use it should be quite different. Compost is used to enhance the quality of your soil in a variety of ways, while top soil is used to replace or add soil to a space. This is important if your garden is full of particularly rocky ground, as most plants won’t be able to grow in that. You also can’t use compost in that situation, as compost should be diluted in normal soil. Basically, compost can be viewed as being quality over quantity, while the reverse of quantity over quality is true for topsoil.
The main reason why you should use topsoil over compost is because topsoil is because it is cheaper to use in bulk. The main reason why you should choose compost over topsoil is because of the higher nutrient content. This is important if you’re trying to grow a potted plant, but if there is a wide open space available for a plant to spread its roots out to, it is usually unnecessary.
Topsoil is usually applied as part of an initial landscaping project. The upkeep of a garden; improving nutrient content and ensuring that pH levels in your ground are optimal, are usually dealt with by compost. Topsoil becomes ideal when you start measuring the required soil by tonnage.
Other than that use, many gardeners use topsoil in order to dilute their own compost. Diluting compost is essential, as pure compost usually retains a lot of moisture, which can harm a lot of plants. Nutrient rich soil can also be a shock to the system for many plants, so using pure compost can damage them in that way too. Mixing together purchased topsoil and compost is certainly one solution to this problem.