I use compost from my compost pile that is constantly being created and fortified with trimmings from vegetables, greens, and fruit, which is them blended into a slurry and added to the compost every few days. To add the slurry, the top one foot or so of the pile is pulled back, the slurry added, and the dirt put back over it. By the time I'm ready to add more of the slurry, there is no sign whatsoever of what was added previously.
To create the mix, I use a ratio as is shown in the first picture below of the compost and vermiculite. In just that amount of compost there are hundreds of tiny earthworms and thousands of microbes. I check the microbe population occassionaly by taking a small amount of the compost, mixing it with water, and viewing it using a high-powered microscope. Follow this link for more about the microbes and other life that inhabit good soil.
If you look close at the second picture, you can see cucumber seeds that I've poked into the four corners of the soil within the pot. I'll cover the seeds with an inch of the mix and then set the entire pot into some water to allow the mix to abosrb the water from the bottom up so as to not disturb the top of the soil or cause it to compact. The seeds should germinate within just a couple of days when placed beneath an halogen light used to warm the soil at the top, similar to the sun heating the soil in early spring. I do not use a heat blanket beneath the pots as some do since that is not something that occurs naturally in nature in early spring.
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