To enjoy delicious, healthful vegetables, apply compost. Dig it in the fall, bury it in the trenches, put it in the furrows where planting and in the holes when transplanting. After plants start shooting up, mix it with equal amounts of soil and use it as a top-dressing.
The rule when mulching is, the finer the material the thinner the layer. Doing this will give you a rich, loamy, friable soil that will grow big yields of all kinds of vegetables. They'll be higher in vitamins and minerals, too.
For sowing seeds indoors or in a cold frame, put your compost through a ½-inch sieve, then shred it with a hoe or even roll it with a rolling pin to make it very fine. Then mix it with equal amounts of sand and soil. The ideal seeding mixture is very mellow and tends to fall apart after being squeezed in your hand.