It looks sandy. For planting hostas I would add old leaves,or whatever you have which adds humus. Scott's top soil has a lot of wooden pieces.

its the opposite to sandy..its clay...but I will be adding grass clippings and mulched leaves

It's a wonder anything can grow in that. Yuk. Good luck steeltown!

pots

or build beds on top of it ... which i swear i told someone today ... you???

why didnt you put the pic in the other post you refer to???

ken

to me the hardest thing about amending this soil is gonna be raking back the mulch...I have a pretty heavy layer of mulch on top of this bed...its a very large bed...for years there was landscaping film down not allowing any of the decomposed mulch to seep into the soil.(the landscaping film was almost a must to begin with..this was nothing more thana big line of brush and poison ivy when we first bought the place 4 years ago)..this spring I removed the landscaping film...I dug out my mower bagger I haven't used for years and put it on...everytime I mow im gonna rake back the mulch and throw in the clippings and rake the mulch back over it...then this fall I will have tons and tons of mulched leaves I will do the same way...then revisit in the spring and see if any improvement..

ken I had posted in the other thread I would start a new thread with a picture of the soil..guess I should have just posted in the other thread

Well,it certainly ain't Red clay! Nothing like what I have. Phil

well what do u guys think?..will I be able to amend it by adding grass cuttings/mulched leaves to the top....will it eventually seep in?...I have heard that's if soil is super bad u wont be able to do this method

Kind of looks like the clay we have in my yard . The kind that when wet makes 25 lb shoes. I managed to use the rototiller and break it up rake out the roots, add as much manure and decomposed leaves and rototill again. Keep it up and your hosta will grow. mine have and I thought it was almost impossible . Don't give up . Hard work but worth the effort. Good luck
Faye

That is the exact same clay that I have, Steel, I'm afraid to tell ya. Here's a pic of a section of yard that construction is happening in. Same stuff:

Dig in/till the amendments one time, as deep as you can (at least 6 inches), then top-dress twice a year with compost/manure. Otherwise, it will take YEARS AND YEARS and your drainage will never be good. I know that isn't what you wanted to hear, but you can always do what I did and battle it for several years and try to fix it from the top down, then realize that it ain't working in this century, then you'll dig in the amendments, just like I did and say, why the heck didn't I just do this from the first? Trust me... You can still do it a section at a time, if that helps.

This post was edited by funnthsun on Tue, Jun 24, 14 at 21:47

funnthsun
heres my thing...I cant stock pile grass clippings in the yard...don't have a place to put em..and don't wanna deal with all the bees/bugs that comes with them...in the fall I would have enuf leaves to till them in...I guess the biggest problem I would see is that I don't own a tiller..so I would have to rent one for a day..and would like to have the stuff here to do amend the soil with in one day....could I just put the grass clippings on all summer andcover with mulch..then when the leaves start falling mulch em then do the tilling in the fall?

Yes, that would be fine. Just work on it as you go, then have a big day of tilling it in, that sounds like a great plan to me. I'd get a big load of compost/manure delivered, too and till that in at the same time. Happy bed, happy gardener, thereafter.

Funnthsun
Do u have amended pics of ur soil?

My soil looks like that, only black. When I lived in the burbs several years ago, I had that gray/tan/white color of soil. It's probably also alkaline.

What I did was use peat moss, landscapers mix and compost and did a "double dig", which is a lot of work. Look at the "lasagna" method of preparing the soil. There have been some threads on here, plus you can find it on google.

bk

Hi Steeltown,
I have clay and the topdressing with piles of stuff (leaves, grass clippings, pine straw, regular straw) works fine here in central Delaware. But my clay doesn't look like yours, it's kind of yellowish.

Since others with soil resembling yours are recommending that you till the organic matter in, then clearly that is what you should do.

But here's my suggestion. Don't limit yourself to grass clippings and leaves. There are other sources of free materials. Cardboard and newspapers would be excellent choices. Just be sure to use brown corrugated cardboard only, not white cardboard which sometimes has a coating, not cereal boxes which can have unwanted chemicals in the dyes. And just use newsprint, not shiny magazine type paper, and spread about 15 sheets thick.

So if I think I understand your plan, you were planning to rake back the mulch, spread grass clippings, then replace the mulch. Then wait until fall or whenever, rent a tiller, rake back the mulch again, then till the grass clippings in. In my opinion a single layer of grass clippings just won't be enough. You will need a rather enormous volume of stuff to improve that soil.

A modified plan might be:
* Rake back the mulch
* Spread a single layer of cardboard
* Thoroughly wet down the cardboard
* Spread a good thick layer of grass clippings (inches thick)
* Spread a layer of manure (you may have to buy this in bags)
* Optionally, spread a layer of peat moss
* Spread a thick layer (15 sheets) of newspaper
* Thoroughly wet down the newspaper
* Spread another layer of grass clippings or leaves.
* If convenient, toss shovels of dirt here and there
* Replace the mulch
If you have dry spells periodically, wet the whole area down.
The manure and dirt will help speed the process up. If the idea of cardboard and newspapers sounds too weird to you, then experiment with them on one section only and see how this works out in the end.

I add sand to my heavy, sticky clay. That's the only thing that makes it workable. I also amend it with leaves and grass clippings, but if I don't also add sand, the soil is soon hard as a rock again.

Annie is talking about lasagna bed prep. Lots of photos and alternate directions are available online. Just search "lasagna gardening".

bk