You don't give a location. I'm guessing from your name West Virginia?

When you plant, dig a big hole...several times the size of the plant and amend the existing soil with organic matter...like compost or planting mix. We have to do that for everything we plant here where the soil is adobe. If you cannot rototill the whole area, just do it one hole at a time.

-Babka

yes.. work above the clay ...

you will NEVER amend mother earth itself.. enough to make a difference...

its all about drainage.. and you cant dig a clay cauldron.. amend it with water retaining soil or media.. and then hope you have drainage ..

ergo ipso presto ... build above ... at least a foot deep... AFTER it all settles ... so shoot for about 18 inches when building ...

ken

Yes, amend in spots. If you put a spinout bag or pot in the ground, it won't help much. The pot will still be sitting in soil that doesn't drain, kind of like a house plant pot sitting in a bucket of water. Try adding compost, sand, and minibark nuggets. The nuggets are usually sold as mulch, but they're great for breaking up clay.

Yes, amend in spots.

==>>>> no.. you amend a whole bed ..

you cant not amend in spots.. which i call planting holes ...

i dont know if mad and i are agreeing or not... so i am trying to clarify ...

and it would be easiest to amend a bed on top of clay ...

clay is really hard to define ... other than being there.. its like defining shade ... when you think about it.. the word means nothing...

dig a 5 gal bucket sized hole.. fill it with water.. and find out how long it takes to drain ... its called a perk test .. and that is how you decide drainage ... and work from there...

in my sand.. it will empty in minutes... sublime draining ...

in BAD clay ... we can be talking a lot of hours ... thats bad ...

and everyones soil is in between the two extremes...

ken

Out here in CA, the test for drainage is 24 hrs. Dig a hole, (or drill a hole with an auger), fill it with water, and if it is drained in 24 hours you are good to plant. The whole Santa Clara Valley is planted like that...and back in the 40's it was called the Valley of Hearts Delight and was covered from end to end with fruit tree orchards. Libby canned their fruit cocktail here.

Steeltowninwv- Are you having to deal with tree roots? What else is growing in the location...sloped ? Need more answers.

-Babka

We have heavy clay here. The Arboretum planted all the hosta in raised beds.

bk

thanks guys..thats what I have been doing..is digging a hole about twice the size of the hosta...and using compost mixture and good soil in that hole before planting the host...they are growing good so far..so I guess I will just keep on keeping on

We have clay, too and I spent years digging holes and amending the hole and it not making a hill of beans of a difference, in the long run. Best thing I ever did was decide I was done with that and started tilling up the whole area that I was planning to plant, mixing in several inches of aged manure/compost, then planting it. Made the difference for me, hole by hole did nothing and just made me spend years spinning my wheels. Hostas will tolerate the hole amending thing more than other plants will. If you want to grow more fussy perennials (a/k/a normal perennials) at any point, reconsider the hole amending thing.

Steel, don't forget the second part of the process, which is to KEEP AMENDING. Top dress at least once a year with aged manure/compost, twice is better. If you do that, and till new areas like I said above, that will make the most difference the fastest and you can conquer that clay!

funnthsun hostas is all I will be doing in this area since its shaded pretty well..when u say top dress with manure compost..i have the hostas mulched...do I just pull back the mulch and add a couple inches of compost around the base of the hostas?

steeltowninwv,
Yes.

I like to amend the whole bed, but it sounds like that might be more than Steel can handle. Amending an area 12-24 inches deep and 4-6 feet around for each hosta is better than nothing, and enough amended areas in one spot should break up the clay and improve drainage. Guess I should have specified the size of the hole. The larger the mature size of the hosta, the bigger the hole should be.

I spent many hours trying to blend compost and bark into heavy clay. The results were eventually worth it, but it was backbreaking work, and I was a lot younger then. Sure couldn't do it now! I tried tilling once, but it only did the top six or seven inches. The water just sat on the underlying clay.

Uh, yeah, that's a pretty big hole, Mad. Heck, I don't even dig that big of a hole for a tree! I think if I did, I'd be...well...dead. Especially for each hosta, holy Hannah, that's like creating a bed per hosta. My hats off to ya. Younger, indeed. I do continue to amend as I plant, but not that big of an area. We are probably achieving similar results with my combination of tilling and amending as I plant and your amending a large planting hole as you plant.

Steel, looks like Butterfly answered your question already... you're thinking right on that. Makes a big difference when top dress regularly.

Years ago, I had terrible clay. I dug all my beds, it was back breaking. This was before the gardenweb and "lasagne" bed forming (which is basically a version of creating the garden above the soil.)
I threw out solid junks of clay and amended with loads and loads of compost/humus, mostly in cheap bags from Walmart. Because of the clay, many poorly chosen plants did not do well, so each time I replanted an area, I double-dug and turned in more compost. Cost me a lot of money and sweat.
Today, my soil is SWEET to work in. Fluffy, easy. A real joy. People comment on it when they see me dig. I often hated gardening when I had the clay and I hated weeding..because it was so difficult. Now, weeding is fun. The stuff just pops out for the most part.
So, it can be done, you just have to want to do it. My philosophy was this: never ignore an opportunity to amend...if I was digging for any reason, I amended. I usually bought the humus bags on clearance, too, so I'd have them on hand whenever I was gardening.
I also used some pricy soil conditioners now and then, as well as gypsum. Just depended on my budget/mood and level of frustration. Lately, I've seen quite a few bags at nurseries that say "soil conditioner".
Nice thing is, the hostas always did just fine in the clay. Those were the beds that took me the longest to get fluffy because I didn't have to replant them often, so they got amended less. However, even years of mulching helped those beds and they are nice now, too.
If I were you, I'd do the largest area you have time and budget for. Maybe instead of "one hosta hole", you dig and amend 1 square yard each time you plant a hosta. Before you know it, you'll have beautiful fluff.

Some free opportunities do exist that will help: coffee grounds from coffee places, autumn leaves on curbs...bring them home, run the mower over them a few times and spread them on your beds, your own produce waste for composting, your community may offer free compost.

When you get free stuff, you often introduce a lot of weed seeds. I found that applying PREEN really helped with that.

well my biggest mistake was ..3 years ago when I moved in..the bed that im speaking of wasn't a bed..it was brush..heavy brush and there were 11 pine trees right beside the bed...so we cut down all 11 pine trees and cleared the brush..then I layed down landscaping film(I understand now a big mistake...but it was almost a must at the time)..so now when I do plant the hostas or any thing else..i pull back way way more of the landscaping film than needed...and cut it out..I will have it all pulled out before long...here is the link to the pics of the bed and plants I just posted...thanks for all ur help

Here is a link that might be useful: new post with pics of the bed and plants

This post was edited by steeltowninwv on Sun, May 25, 14 at 0:19