I'm envious of your clay. We moved five years ago to gardening space that is near pure sand. From what I've read the best thing to help with drainage for clay soil is to add sand. Tied with that is compost. I've just been adding compost, and compost, and compost, as well as other organic nutrients and have seen improvement every year.

There's no reason to abandon your organic approach. Check out the Organic Gardening Forum where you can get more advice and suggestions.

Here is a website that you may find useful.http://www.extension.umn.edu/Garden/ There is a wealth of info there.
It really isn't necessary to test your soil every year, I think the recommendation is about every five years. Compost is one of the best things you can do for your soil. You need to be careful adding sand to clay, you can end up with bricks. You can build raised beds, or berms if drainage is a problem.Leaf mold, compost, peat moss....any organic material will be helpful.
I am mainly organic but do not rule out synthetic chemicals in some cases. You may want to research IPM (integrated pest management). An excellent book is "The Truth About Organic Gardening" by Jeff Gilman. He talks about and compares synthetic and natural chemicals and their eco impact.
If you haven't had a soil test done, it would be a good idea. Also, instead of trying to change your conditions to meet plant needs you may want to choose plants suited to your conditions. Best of luck to you and have fun playing in the dirt.

You do not need to wait until spring to test your soils, unless you have added something like sulfur flakes or granules that take a while to break down and influence the soil. This excludes organic matter. There is no need to test every year, unless there is a specific reason to.

Adding sand to clay only produces hard pan soil in certain situations, situations where if the clay was just mixed by itself it would produce the same result. Still, if you add sand (which is a good thing), I would always include organic matter sources as amendments at the same time. You can never add too much organic matter. You should never need to add lime as a general practice. Compost is a wonderful thing.

As you have already figured out, wet clay based soils should never be worked, and the colder it is, the worse it will be. Digging wet clay will produce the hard bricks that hostaholic talks of.

Thanks for all the good info. I've added lots of municipal and cow manure compost and peat moss. I haven't added any sand at all (after reading warnings about creating concrete). I think I may just do a few soil samples yet this fall. Just to make sure I didn't screw something up, and prior to planting next spring. I hope that the organic stuff I dug in will provide the food the plants need.

Unfortunately, I'm very aware of the wet clay soil issue. Ours is almost always a little wet. Problem is our water table is so high, If I dig down much more than a foot, I hit really wet clay soil- even when we've had relatively little rain. (I've honestly considered digging in a water feature without a pond liner. The groundwater's so close to the surface.) It's also taught me to raise plants up a bit when I install them, and choose plants that can tolerate wetter feet.

I hope I'm starting to get the hang of this. The results will be evident either way hopefully starting next season.

It sounds as though you are off to a good start. You are aware that good soil is the basis for successful gardening and are choosing plants to fit your conditions. Those are two things that many people ignore and then wonder why they have problems.

Thanks for all the great advice on soil. The compost,amendments, and double digging really is paying off this year. The plants are all growing fast and healthy. The only problem is that a few of my plant choices (especially Johnson's Blue Hardy Geraniums) have grown so well, that I think I need to re-evaluate their placement. They've doubled the size that the label said they would grow to.

I'll keep on adding compost whenever I can. I can really see that it's working.

Thanks again!

Congratulations! It takes some people many years to learn what you already know.

An intriguing supplement advocated by some is the litteral dust from rocks, called rock dust. Can you believe it? People who like it say it re-mineralizes the soil in a good, cheap and natural way. You might even be able to find it super cheap around here since the people at the large garden centers aren't really familiar with it yet.