How to determine quality of compost?

I have a local landscape supplier and they carry bulk amounts of compost. One being manure based and the other wood based(harvested at a 50 year old mill site). I'm looking to do the Coots Mix and through a little bit of research I've come across several people that tend to shy away from the traditional 1:1:1 base mix due to poor quality compost. My question for you guys is... How do you determine the quality of the compost? What texture am I looking for? As I know that poor quality compost will result in the soil becoming too dense and clump up.

High quality compost should look dark brown and crumbly like coffee grounds. It should feel fine and smooth, no big chunks of anything, everything should be well broken down. There should be no bad odor, just a rich earthy smell.

I think it would be very hard to find a humus source similar to what coot uses in his mix unless you make it yourself. Here is how he makes his

Fully decomposed humus has a sweet earthy smell; black gold. What you want preferably for a coots mix is for there to be live composting worms in it at some point. Their bellies contain all the microbes your soil needs for maintaining activity for decomposition of organic materials and absorption. As seen in the above reddit screenshot coots adds in a ton of veganic inputs to the compost bin and then let’s the worms do all the rest. This makes for very high quality compost.
I would opt for the manure based compost over the wood but then add that in along with some worm castings and count it as a single input of compost. Of course that will make the mix kinda heavy so then you’ll need to add some perlite and/or coco and/or vermiculite to improve drainage and reduce compaction.

Richard Drysift said:

Fully decomposed humus has a sweet earthy smell; black gold. What you want preferably for a coots mix is for there to be live composting worms in it at some point. Their bellies contain all the microbes your soil needs for maintaining activity for decomposition of organic materials and absorption. As seen in the above reddit screenshot coots adds in a ton of veganic inputs to the compost bin and then let’s the worms do all the rest. This makes for very high quality compost.
I would opt for the manure based compost over the wood but then add that in along with some worm castings and count it as a single input of compost. Of course that will make the mix kinda heavy so then you’ll need to add some perlite and/or coco and/or vermiculite to improve drainage and reduce compaction.

Click to expand...

Drysift is the man, came here to say just this.

I'd liken quality compost to that of quality weed; smell. Quality compost, like weed, doesn't need to be stuck up your nose to know its good. It will literally scream at you, and the scent of it alone will get the endorphins going.

You'll know the compost is good because you'll realize you've been standing around huffing on the scent for 5+ minutes before realizing you've spent that much time savoring and enjoying the scent

xD

Richard Drysift said:

I would opt for the manure based compost over the wood but then add that in along with some worm castings and count it as a single input of compost.

Click to expand...

Dr. Faust of BioAg likes woody material in his compost because it has lignin, which produces humic acid. https://www.kisorganics.com/pages/cannabis-cultivation-and-science-podcast-episode-11

Thanks for all the replies hopefully some of you organic guys are still here! I went to check out my local gardening/nursery/landscape suppliers. One has what they call a cascade blend which from their description is harvested at an old mill site woodbased and I'm assuming its cold composted and turned whenever since they didn't mention adding any types of nitrogen(greens) into the mix. The other garden spot had compost that had wood that still looked like wood still visible about 2 inches long and about the width of a twig. I will post pictures once I get on my phone of what they look like as far as smell and feel. The Cascade Blend had these small pebbles in it, I'm assuming for when they go and turn the compost with their machinery. Very crumbly, perfect moisture, no big pieces of wood that I could identify and the smell was earthy, but it wasn't screaming at me type of earthy. Really had to put my nose on it. The other garden spot had a "garden compost" blend which had leaves, grass clippings and things of that nature. I reached into it and it was noticeably hotter then the other spot and the smell was noticeably stronger. Smelled like it had way more life in it? It was hard to identify what it smelled like but I guess I would say it was a sweet smell? I'm assuming it wasn't completely finished. So one had pebbles, one was unfinished. So I scoured the internet for another source that wasn't 3 hours away here in Southern Oregon. I found a worm casting supplier! Jackpot. Now my question is.. Since all the items I need to make a base are all 1 hour away. I wanted to see if I could just go to my local landscape supplier, pick up a 1:1 ratio of sphagnum peat moss and pumice get all my coots amendments mixed in it. Then have them deliver it to my pad and I just top dress heavily on the worm castings instead of having it mixed. Considering the delivery cost it just wouldn't make sense. Thoughts??

I'm thinking pay the big bucks and get quality worm castings instead of bulk pebble ridden compost/unfinished compost. Now just need inputs on the 2(pumice):2(peatmoss):1-2(wormcastings top dressed not mixed).

Got the kelp meal, crab meal, neem seed meal, basalt, oyster, gypsum, and malted barley. Just wished these dang bags had a number of how many cups is in per bag. Seems to vary depending on the supplier.

@MustangStudFarm @kratos015 @Richard Drysift @dubekoms

Here we go

The Garden compost quality was way different when I visited it for a second time. This time they had a bigger pile and the twigs were gone.. Ugh, consistency seems to be an issue. So I'm just confused as to which route to go. The garden compost did look like compost the second time around and had a stronger earthy/sweet smell and very dense. The Cascade blend which is the second picture had great texture, like coffee grounds but had these pebbles in it which usually means poor quality control from what I read. All bulk for 50 - 60 a yard. And ofcourse the worm castings guy, I'm sure I'll be paying premium prices as he seems to be a local small business guy. I mentioned 3 yards and he did say it was his downtime and would be pushing it to gather that amount in a month so I may have to use less worm casting inputs. So which gamble should I take? I'm assuming worm castings. Or just do a mix and match and get some garden/cascade compost and add the worm castings too. I may just go back and do another quick quality check on those bulk suppliers to see how much it's been broken down.

Well at least you have choices,when I was looking it was one kind of bulk or a bag of sea soil I think it was called.I went with the bag.As you described it had a sweeter smell.I notice now that its been cooking for awhile the perlite is stained black and when mixing my hand is stained black even after washing.