Soil scientists studying the role of compost in horticulture have found that, while compost is useful for building soil structure, it does not supply large enough quantities of the nutrients essential for plant growth to make it a replacement for fertilizer
Many home gardeners, however, have found they can grow healthy and highly productive plants in soil that lacked essential nutrients by enriching the soil with nothing but compost
Some of the varieties of plants grown by home gardeners require greater quantities of nutrients in order to be healthy than do the varieties of plants generally grown by the soil scientists in test plots.