Ken, that means the point of your post worked.

anyone have any more ideas ????

ken

We have hopeless clay soil. After many trials/failures, we ended up using mostly raised bed, but it is expensive for big area. I am trying to think of a cheaper way to use the remaining acre. Has any one ever tried using wood chips in quantity? I am thinking of tilling in about say 50% fresh wood chips for about a foot or so deep (plus any leaves etc.)and let it sit for a couple of years before starting to use it for planting. Any thought?

Like others, we do lasagna gardening. When I have enough materials, I have started a new bed layering up cardboard, leaves, kitchen scraps, newspaper, etc as high as I can and let it all break down. I have planted directly into a lasagna layer by digging a hole directly into the layers, then adding enough potting soil/compost/peat moss to surround the rootball. Then adding a layer of bark mulch to the top, it's an instant garden bed. Over time, the height of the bed lowers as the materials break down. I've not had any problems with plants planted this way and the soil in those areas that were started this way is the best in my garden. Tons of earthworms the next year.

Powdered gypsum works well. Truck in or use bagged topsoil (depending on size of bed). Organic materials. Prepare the bed ahead of the season which you are going to plant. Better yet: raised beds!

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I have learned the hard way that plants that do well in clay are the best solution. Forget those that don't. Many gardening websites (including Bluestone Perennials) have a search engine that will let you search on "clay soil" and give you a number of alternatives. My reliable favorites are echinacea, daylilies, white dome hydrangea, goldenrod, autumn joy sedum, iris, true geraniums. All of these grow well for me with no fuss. I'm slowly trialing other plants, mainly ones that are natives and grow in prairie-type soil conditions. In one small area of my yard, I dug out the clay and put better soil in. This was labor-intensive and difficult for me, so I only found this solution appropriate for a defined area. In that spot I have Japanese anemones, Asiatic lilies and white nancy ajuga. (The lily and ajuga would probably have grown in my regular soil, but not the anemone). In another area of my yard, I put in a raised bed, where I amended my soil with well-draining soil -- mostly bags of soil meant for growing cactus, along with gravel and compost. In that spot I mainly grow lavenders and sage. The lavenders need good drainage, and they do well here. Finally, I had a weedy narrow strip of impossible soil along one side of the house. I dug out some of the weeds, threw some green material down, covered with wet newspaper and then with mulch. I did that two years ago and am now going to plant some flowering shrubs. I guess my point is, there is no easy solution but analyze your yard and figure out the best answer for those areas where you want to plant.

My yard still hates me, but I did hear that gypsum can be worked into clay to help break it up. I am still adding compost and mulch. So far, so good, except in the back where the mongrel horde has turned the place into nothing but weeds and compacted dog park-type dirt patches. Plan to attack that again this weekend. [Insert whining about wanting a lovely backyard here]

another to bring up..lets get these forums rolling...

ken

bumpy, bumpy ...

ken

I have clay soil also. Built our house here on grandparents old homestead 9 years ago. Built large foundation bed first summer. Clay soil hard as a rock! Starts out orange, further you dig soil turns gray. I added lots of bagged garden soil, even would fill some planting holes with good dirt. But I have always mulched every year with wood chips. The first few years I lost quite a few plants too. But now the soil in that bed is pretty good! Lots of worms! I also grow plants that can tolerate clay. Very proud of this flower bed now, it has come a long way!

I gardened in clay for 13 years. I was lucky to have three giant maple trees that dropped incredible volumes of leaves each fall. I used the leaves as mulch in established beds, and as lasagna material if I needed new beds. The worms love the leaves and do a fantastic job of incorporating them into the clay. The result is wonderfully crumbly soft soil that my grandmother could garden in.

Now I have the opposite problem, sand. But, the solution is the same. Now I mulch with shredded oak leaves to help the sandy soil retain more moisture. I learned all I know from the Soil, Compost, and Mulch forum. You, too, can become a Compost Whacko!

Martha

bumping this one up

ken

Went to college in NC and spent a lot of time working on our campus farm which had Carolina red clay soil. All we did aside from adding lime when soil tests showed it was necessary was to continually add compost. The compost was 100% of the "yard waste" generated from the daily activities of the landscaping/grounds crews. Leaves, branches, grass clippings, old plants, etc would get thrown on the pile.

We would bring up wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of compost and dump it on the beds and then U-bar the soil. This brought up more clay and dug the compost 8-12 inches down. We did the same thing in the high tunnel greenhouse we built there. Rarely did we ever need to fertilize and when we did it was a minor sprinkling of soybean meal or something similar. The plants were enormous (except the summer it rained almost everyday for 2 1/2 months) and the farm was only 3 years old when I graduated (this past May!). I can't wait to go back and see what 5-10 years of compost can do to the soils.

I've moved to San Diego and am building some raised beds for my parents in their backyard and they always comment about the "crap dirt" referring to the hard clay soils. I tell them there's no such thing as crap dirt only dirt with potential!! I'm going to be using the leftover dirt from some recent tree plantings and a lot of compost to fill the beds and expect it to produce healthy vigorous plants.

So clay soil isn't a plant death sentence so long as you know what to do with it. The clay particles are charged so they hang onto ions in the soil and help prevent nutrients from being washed out as quickly, a great thing for you and your plants.

Also, mulch is an amazing tool. We've been applying mulch to our yard for 17 years here in San Diego because it aids in water retention but it also greatly improves the soil over time as it breaks down. It would probably improve the soil faster in places where it rains more often and breaks down faster but it even works in the semi-irrigated desert.

This forum is great. Been reading and learning from it for 3 years as I finished my undergraduate degree and now finally have the time to contribute to it.

the Houzz search engine.. seems better than GW was ..

ken

Why keep bumping this thread, ken?
There is no simple answer.
It depends on: what type of clay soil you have, and what type of plants you are trying to grow.
Some clays can benefit from gypsum, in fact it's the calcium ion in the gypsum that makes a difference, so if your soil is incredibly acidic as mine is, you might as well just use calcitic limestone. Some clays, western ones in particular, are already charged with Ca++ ions and will not benefit from further calcium. It's not an overnight process at all; the calcium ions have to ion-exchange with magnesium, sodium or hydrogen ions, and the clay undergoes a nano-molecular change when the effective particle size increases. It might take a couple applications over a couple years to notice a difference.

Organic amendment can offer temporary (up to several years) improvement sufficient to establish some standard garden/landscape material. However, the best long term fix...and this is why athletic field managers spend mucho dineros on this stuff...is permanent non-organic structure improvers, tilled or hole-filled in. Like Permatill, or Turface. (edit: see clarification below!)

Love the soil chemistry, davidrt28.

Did a bit more (introductory) reading.

Easily understandable in terms of high school Chemistry.

I still contend that, unless you are planning on dealing with an entire bed, using non-organic soil structure improvers is not beneficial in any way. It creates a small, non-native soil that will inhibit plant's willingness to extend it's roots beyond the "improved" area, and can easily create a bathtub effect, in which the "improved" area actually becomes, in effect, a water retention pond. Composted organic materials are the best way to improve soil in relatively small, home-garden scenarios, in my own personal opinion. They encourage micro-organisms and insect life to move through the soil, taking organic materials deeper down, and help open up airways and waterways within the soil structure.

In my experience, at least handling clay by excavating a whole bed and filling the hole with a clay-organic mixture can certainly have a sump effect; that is, unless the bottom of the initial excavation is broken up with a pick axe.

If you want to know what approach is best ask the plants (by their performance). Of course, it's not helpful that the plants frequently disagree.

" It creates a small, non-native soil that will inhibit plant's willingness to extend it's roots beyond the "improved" area"

How do you think all those people walk on the National Mall in DC without compacting the soil so severely that the grass can't grow? They used several truck loads of a fired clay product, tilled into the soil over a huge area. The same is true of hundreds of golf courses and athletic fields around the country.
Yes, soil improvement within a plant's 1 - 5 year intended root zone is a bad idea, I would not disagree. I wasn't recommending that. That's very different than improving a vast area well beyond a plant's future root zone. (Which could still be problematic if done wrong - it's not going to magically, permanently fix a drainage problem that requires, say, grading or drains)

As I said, these product, used correctly, work, or grounds managers would not spend tens of thousands of dollars to buy pallet loads of the material. I could speak of my own experience with them but that's not even necessary, and I've already done it in other threads.

"composted organic materials are the best way to improve soil in
relatively small, home-garden scenarios, in my own personal opinion."
I don't disagree it improves many standard scenarios with most standard plants. For one thing, many clay soils are not actually as bad as people think they are. For most typical garden plants, I'd much rather garden in one of the better clays (like those of SE PA) than anything close to pure sand. (unless I were in a climate like the Italian lakes, with 70 inches of rain a year!) Which is why I essentially said that in my earlier post. If you want to grow a bed of Dwarf Conifers or Daphnes in Raleigh, North Carolina, however...the standard approach is not going to work or not going to work as well as the more involved one. The NCSU arboretum used Permatill over a huge, almost 1 acre area to help grow desert plants.

Clarification, btw:
when said this -
hole-filled in.
I DID NOT mean filling in the planting hole! I meant the specialized equipment whose name escapes me right now, that creates hundreds of deep holes using a rotating set of spikes, and then automatically fills them with the structure & aeration improving substrate.

"In my experience, at least handling clay by excavating a whole bed and
filling the hole with a clay-organic mixture can certainly have a sump
effect;"

Given what we know about water movement in soil, in some cases even just digging up the soil in an area, and replacing it with nothing added, could create a sump effect! In fact you almost have to wonder if in some cases, the famous double-digging of the English perennial borders actually helps, among other things, an area simply retain more water in a place where summer precipitation is actually surprisingly low, and would be a universally bad idea in climates with higher rainfall.

An aerifyer is the piece of equipment that David is talking about, I think....a core aerifyer, to be exact. You want something that actually pulls plugs from the soil.

I come back to ask the (perennial) plants by their subsequent performance.

The herbaceous plant part of David Tomlinson's 3/4 acre Merlin's Hollow garden, in Aurora, Ontario, which houses around 2000 different perennials was constructed with double digging. The alpine beds are gravel.

One of David Tomlinson's themes is that a (large) mixed perennial garden contains a series of micro-environments and that it is up to the perennial gardener to identify and take advantage of them.

I've personally installed a number of mixed perennial gardens and subsequently maintained some of them. The picture below (August 28, 2011) is a mixed perennial garden I installed, in what was previously lawn. By 2011, I'd been maintaining it for about ten years. I'd say I installed that and other gardens, in part, by "digging up the soil", upgrading it with organic matter and by digging in additional organic matter in each subsequent year.

That's pleasant looking, but I don't see any plants that are considered particularly demanding as to soil structure.

Futhermore the standard deviation of summer rainfall in Ontario is probably more manageable than it is in, say, my location, where you have to account for a tropical storm possibly parking over one's garden and dumping 5-15 inches of rain in 48 hours. I believe in those cases my use of structure enhancers has helped the soil stay more aerated than it otherwise could have.

As you say, the alpine beds required gravel...even up there. I haven't been to Green Spring Gardens in NoVA in ages but I remember the parking circle there had a big rock garden growing a few things you would not expect to do so well in a humid climate, like IIRC, some of those dry climate Agastaches, Origanums, etc. I'm roughly having the same experience here, finally getting certain plants through the year by constructing a raise berm of sand, pea gravel and stones. (on top of what was already my best drained soil!) I might try something like Morina again: in London I've seen them used for bedding at Kew, on flat land, in non-specialized areas of the garden, with whatever moisture-retentive riverine soil is found there. That would be impossible with my heat and heavy summer rainfall.

The typical "amend with organic" advice is not bad advice, generally. I'm just pointing out it has limitations in certain cases.

Davidrt28, your point is well taken.

Although the picture only shows part of that mixed perennial garden, I have heavily relied on perennials that I've found worked in my gardens, with my style of perennial gardening and in our predominant soil conditions That selection still leaves a lot of choice.

I also find it easier to get through a summer here when the garden has a sprinkler system, as there is in the garden above.

Davidrt28, in general, when I comment here, I assume that the comments will be read by a lot of home gardeners, a lot of them with minimal understanding of soils and how they work, and most of them focusing on working in relatively small areas within their yard. What your average homeowner/gardener does with their soil is going to be very different from the large installs that a professional landscaping firm might do, or what a landscape architect might plan. Since the title of this thread is specifically aimed at "Newbies," I start with the simplest, surest ways to improve your soil on a small scale and try to avoid confusion. Anyone with an interest in learning more about soils, I would highly recommend finding a local community college, taking a soils class and to understand what you are doing and how it will affect your soil (or not) before you go digging in all sorts of stuff into your beds. Knowledge is power. Just my personal opinion.

Re gravel beds: David Tomlinson's Merlin's Hollow has a large area composed of gravel beds.

Below one of my favourite pictures (partial to primulas) from his garden; on gravel (July 4, 2009).

Personally, I wouldn't be adventurous enough to use gravel.

kirstin, you read my mind. The best way is to add organic matter (humus). You can purchase bags of compost or find a place locally and buy a truckload, many waste disposal plants make compost and sell it cheap. Work it in well at least 6" deep. A thick layer of mulch left to break down each year will add more organic matter over time. Creating better soil is a process and not something usually done overnight in one quick fix.

Adding both concrete grade sand and organic matter worked well for me but some people throw a fit when you suggest adding sand. I only report what worked well here, it might be different in some other place. My soil used to be heavy clay loam that would form big cracks in summer but I've seen clay that is so bad, dense and sticky that the only solution would be to remove it and pay to truck in some good bottom land topsoil.

There are many plants that will grow in clay. There are also many which won't. Choose the ones that will tolerate it.

"but some people throw a fit when you suggest adding sand."
With good reason since in some situations, the right mix of the right (well, wrong!) sand and the wrong clay will create something resembling concrete.

"I assume that the comments will be read by a lot of home gardeners"
Kirstin, point well taken. I just want people to have to the "bigger picture" at their disposal. The professionals do what they do because it can have additional capabilities beyond simple organic amendment, and people should at least be aware of that in my opinion. Adding organic usually helps. If you look around though, you can also find stories of it backfiring in certain generally uncommon circumstances. Nothing is a magic bullet. LIfe isn't always black and white. Blah blah blah.

Rhizo - thank you, yes, I was thinking of a core aerator.

David Tomlinson, who designed his Merlin's Hollow with efficient maintenance in mind, upgrades his herbaceous beds by spreading 2 inches of wet maple leaves over them each fall.

It apparently takes the large population of earthworms 6 or 7 year to completely pull one years leaves under.

There's a lot of maples around here.

Any maple seedlings that get established in the beds only have to be pulled out once.

Each situation is different and where I live it is very different than the two posters above. Here I grow xeric plants because I got tired of wasting water, besides its getting to the point that supplemental watering is not an option if a person has a conscience at all down here in the hotter and dryer Midwest and SW. Many xeric plants do not benefit from the addition of compost, it makes the soil too rich -- so what to do? It is advised to add Soil Mender (trademark) Expanded Shale, very coarse sand or chicken gravel. What I was after was raised beds with lean soil that drains fast. Thats what I got.

I brought in drainage material by the truckloads. Amount matters and people who have done this successfully will agree with that. Those who merely theorize, I don't listen to (obviously) especially if they live in a place so entirely different than mine.

I second Ken's statement in the original post ANYTHING BUT CLAY. Roots cannot breathe in it, its a sea of sticky mud after rain, it dries hard as a rock & forms large cracks in summer which harms foundations, its hard to water once it dries out which happens quickly here and it is unpleasant in every imaginable way.

Personally I hate gardening in clay, I refuse to garden in clay and I have definitely fixed that by getting drastic and not letting tales of doom influence me. My soil is now sandy. Most plants that are appealing to me require excellent drainage and are not conventional bedding plants & they do quite well in it and have for several years now but I also found the more conventional plants do very well too. I've read all the comments against doing this and how it makes concrete (false) but my experience in my particular case in this particular part of the country for my purposes has proved it to be very successful. I always wonder if all those people saying to never add sand have ever actually done it or are they all just quoting from the same source? I don't know but I do wonder.

"I second Ken's statement in the original post ANYTHING BUT CLAY. Roots
cannot breathe in it, its a sea of sticky mud after rain, it dries hard
as a rock & forms large cracks in summer which harms foundations,
its hard to water once it dries out which happens quickly here and it is
unpleasant in every imaginable way."
This is true of the "bad clays". There are better soils classified by USGS as "loamy clays" that are some cases considered excellent agricultural and agronomic assets.

"I always wonder if all those people saying to never add sand have ever actually done it"

Yes I've been gardening since I was a child and at some point in my teen years naively added a bag of play sand to an 5'X5' area because I'd read somewhere it would help me grow dwarf conifers. In fact it, yes, formed something that became, in places, even hardier than the native red clay of Virginia. There IS a way to do it: if it worked well for you, you found that way. But it's not always the best solution...just as adding organics is not always the best solution, either! I think we are all more or less agreeing there is not always a one-size-fits-all fix.

cf: http://puyallup.wsu.edu/~linda%20chalker-scott/horticultural%20myths_files/Myths/Amendments%202.pdf

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ken

Ken - thank you for creating these threads. I love to see someone who is thinking of others and trying to pass along their experiences. This winter is moving along fast! Hard to believe spring is around the corner.

i did it.. way back when .. to drive attendance in the forums .... to bring new folks into the fold ...

it can be a simple as buying a few plants .. and shoving them in the ground ... but sometimes it isnt ...

i just hated the thought of peeps with interest.. giving up ... because they failed for some reason ... didnt think about some variable ... and in this case.. clay was the worst variable i could think up ... lol

ken

It is a good idea for newbies and a great review for everyone. I agree clay is one of the worst obstacles!

I have a comment on this.... I have tried to establish gardens in every home I've ever lived in - even as a kid growing up, and with my grandfather's help. I've almost always had to deal with clay. When I lived in Virginia the soil wasn't so bad, and it was more acid, so I had an easier time growing things that I wouldn't dare try here in Kansas (too bad I didn't have more time and money then - my kids were little).

But back in the midwest (I've lived in Illinois, Missouri and Kansas) - I've always had to deal with clay and I have learned that planting (with difficulty at first) has a great effect, in addition to a nice topping of shredded hardwood mulch (every year if possible). And then if you do this year after year - expanding your planting, and thereby working the soil, and topping with a good layer of shredded hardwood, etc..... - eventually your soil will become very, very nice. The hardwood breaks down (don't use that cypress stuff!) - I know this costs money, but it works and the plants love it. It also encourages moisture retention and living things like worms, etc. And it discourages weeds.

After a few years of mulching, and the plants working on the clumps with their roots, and the worms doing their job, you will one day go out and put the shovel into the soil and will be amazed by the ease and quality.

That's my two-cents worth.

Oh - and I have no idea whether you all will think this is crazy or not --- but in my current home, which was a new build, the building process left the soil so incredibly bad that we tried the "Earthright" stuff that supposedly uses enzymes to break up the clay. My husband swears it helped -- and he should know because he does most of my hardest digging for me - like for trees and larger shrubs. Honestly - it was the worst that either of us midwesterners had ever seen - they compacted it and were not careful of removing debris and gravel - what a mess! The work goes on....

Thankfully, there are no "enzymes" that "break up clay" - in that exact sense. Enzymes can interact with clay particles; and there are chemicals that can affect how intact clay particle behave. The Earthright stuff, described here: Hummert International
is a long-lasting polymer surfactant that is supposed to make the clay particles in certain soils more suitable for horticultural and agricultural uses. Presumably, in a similar way as the gypsum or calcium ions I've mentioned elsewhere on this thread: force the particles to clump in a way that opens the soil structure. I'd actually been curious to try some, but I noticed they are far more marketed in the midwest and high plains than around here, so I wondered if maybe they are more effective, to whatever degree they are, out there. They are also very expensive.

Disregard too, the notion that this is some kind of new technology. My memory is now vague but when I researched it - heck, almost a decade ago, how time flies! - I found that this idea had been around for a long time. In fact one of the big erstwhile chemical companies, maybe it was Uniroyal, maybe it was Union Carbide, first promoted and sold such a substance, mainly to farmers, back in the 40s. There are other brands, too: http://www.outsidepride.com/lawn-aerators/lazyman-liquid-gold.html

Cover crops are an option if you're working with a sunny location that isn't subject to city/HOA rules -- say in a rural area or perhaps a back yard.

I planted cereal rye and daikon radish in my hell strip a couple of Septembers ago. Ideally you want to let the rye grow until boot stage (4-5 feet tall) before cutting it down (which in my area is in late May or early June), to minimize the chance of regrowth and give the roots as much time as possible to penetrate the soil. In my hell strip I pulled all the rye by hand in early April and left the residue on the ground, then planted through it in May. I did the early cut to avoid getting a city code citation as well as to give the allelopathic rye residue time to break down before planting.

The daikon radish is sort of like a natural core aerator. Its thick roots penetrate the soil and leave holes when it winter kills and rots away in the spring. You could conceivably rake a calcined clay product like Turface MVP into the holes to help with drainage.

One nice thing about cover crops is that there's no need for deep tillage in order to incorporate compost, grit, pine bark, etc. You just need a bit of disturbance at the surface to cover the seeds. That way you're leaving intact what soil structure exists already. Learn about cover crops here:

http://www.sare.org/Learning-Center/Books/Managing-Cover-Crops-Profitably-3rd-Edition

Well David- whatever's in it, it helped.

Thanks - I don't doubt that it could have. I just wanted to give people more background on those products. Are you in the midwest?

Yes, Kansas City area. You're right - that stuff is expensive. So we only used it the first season in the house. I think he sprayed it twice that year.

On this subject generally- I'm all for planting things that are happy in your particular area. Which is why I've given up on the real acid lovers. I've tried and tried with azaleas, rhododendrons, dogwoods. I can never seem to get things adjusted enough for them to thrive - they just hang on, looking anemic. So - "when in Rome,.....". But it's worthwhile to improve your clay, and I believe the organic material, plants and living things are the best solutions, along with a little elbow grease and patience.

Windymess, I am of the same opinion, though from time to time I am still tempted by Rhododendron prinophyllum (also in KC area). Days like today -- cold, dry, windy -- help talk me out of it. Also the effort of deep soil amendment or raised bed construction.

One trouble for me is that a lot of the things I want to plant want a drier, faster-draining, more alkaline soil. The prairie plants from west of here tend to be shorter, so they're more suited to the scale of my yard than a lot of the tallgrass species that are native to the area. Adding a lot of organic material isn't really the way to go for these things. It makes them grow too vigorously and they get floppy.

Clay particles are the smallest of soil mineral particles. Nothing you do will break down clay. Adding organic matter will not change soil texture - it is strictly based on mineral particles. There are many types of clays. In general, the clays in highly weathered soils are much less sticky than those in less weathered soils.

There are things you can do to improve soil STRUCTURE. This involves encouraging clay particles to clump together. Organic material will help in nearly all soils. In SOME soils gypsum will help. If clays are not clumped then increasing SOLUBLE calcium can improve structure. Gypsum is the most common amendment for this purpose. It is calcium sulfate and will dissolve, releasing its calcium. Gypsum WILL NOT change soil pH! It is widely used in desert soils. Even though they contain lots of calcium (as calcium carbonate) this is not soluble in high pH soils, so gypsum is added. In acid soils, lime (calcium carbonate) will dissolve and increase soil calcium levels.

For both lime and gypsum, time is required for them to dissolve, but the reactions by which they replace other soil ions is very rapid (minutes).

"For both lime and gypsum, time is required for them to dissolve, but the
reactions by which they replace other soil ions is very rapid
(minutes)."

I generally agree with your post but not this. Yes on a molecular level the reaction could be quick, but unless you could somehow finely intersperse a source of calcium ions into your soil...by fine I mean the results you would get with a Blendtec blender, not even a rototiller...it is going to take time for the source of calcium ions, and the ions, to disperse in the soil. For one thing the most convenient spreadable minerals are pelleted, so it will take a few rains to dissolve the pellets. From my experience with severely mucky soil, it took at least 3-4 applications over a 18 months before the situation was substantially improved. I would guess in an area of 1/6 of an acre or so, I applied about 800-1000 lbs of calcinic limestone (mostly) and gypsum. Of course rain and soil are very acidic here so the alkalinity wasn't a problem.

Also a newbie here. I have been at my property here in northeast Ohio for 3 years this summer and have extremely hard clay. I don't know they type, but it will break your back if you try to double dig it. I started out doing the dig a hole amend and plant (bath tub) routine the first year and haven't had much success, obviously. What I have been doing, last year and currently, is digging at least a shovel and a half deep and removing the hard thick rock/clay casting from my shovel blade. I leave the top 6 inches or so that is darker, however will still mold into whatever shape your heart desires. I have been throwing the rock hard clay in the back yard near the woods and will grade it out later while enhancing it with leaf mold from my yard.

To the remaining soil I add several bags of cow manure and peat moss. I then work that in with a small garden tiller. Just bought a honda fg1100 and turn about 8-10 inches of the soil together. I keep doing this until the soil becomes really dark and I can see some of the clay forming small little round balls. I also take some in my hand and squeeze it to see if it stays formed or falls apart. I may have to wait a few days and come back to add a few bags more. I just bought a bag of pelleted gypsum and will be giving that a try this week with the method I described. I don't know how this is going to work in the long run. It could end up reverting back to the sculpture-like density clay it was when I started, but I am at least going to give it my best.

josh.. be very careful about regrading near the tree line .... but that a question for another post ...

ken

About 3-4 years ago I decided that I would start landscaping my house. Had NO clue I would end up gardening and fall in love! I also had NO clue what I would get myself into.

I will never forget my first trip to Lowes and saw what every clueless newbie notices; Pretty plants in full bloom (hydrangeas). Of course I bought on impulse and lack of any kind of knowledge and came home and planted them! Weeks later all dead!!!!

After many many many many failed attempts at planting I never realized why. I ended up at this rose nursery in Tyler and the guy was amazing! He told us that in all the years of him landscaping he grew everything in the same soil. He told us about expanded shale. It's not cheap here and I haven't found it in bulk either. So our new garden bed was amended with it and of course I use manure, compost, blood meal all that stuff to help my soil. So far so good.

I'm going to start a rose garden next and will not only amend with shale I'm going to also try the lasagna method.

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