mindwing, where did this "compost" come from. Real compost will hold copious quantites of water. I have never had a problem with my compost not holding water, and most often I use my compost in the pots to start seeds as well as to grow the potted plants we have.

All compost in our climate needs help holding water. When we were younger, my husband made tons of compost in about eight rotating piles. Now we buy it from the greenwaste people at the dump.It holds water okay in the winter, but when the hot drought comes, it needs clay soil mixed in to hold water.

Here in CA we can go 6 to 9 months without any rain to speak of,
mindwing

I wonder if Kimm's compost is a different animal than mindwing's. It has to be really fine to use for seed starting, but I can imagine stuff coming from a municipal dump might be quite coarse. I tend to be too impatient to wait long to use my homemade compost, so there is always a lot of coarse material in it. It seems to hold water fine in the lower layers, but the top dries out and functions more as a mulch than a growing medium.

Actually, the stuff from the dump is fine enough to use for seeds, much finer than what we got from my husband's piles. But it makes a better mulch than a planting material in the hot weather unless mixed with a few inches of soil.

But it is nice to mix some in the soil and then use more for mulch.

mindwing

Compost, that has been allowed to dry out, will repel water just as peat moss and very dry soils do, but once thoroughly wet compost should hold that moisture for quite some time. It is just a matter of getting that compost properly wet.