How to amend garden soil that's mostly clay?

[QChickieMama]

I've used a garden plot here for 3 seasons, and after many disappointing yields, I'm realizing the soil is to blame. It's clay. When it rains, the garden becomes a pool and the plants rot. I've put a bunch of compost and composted horse manure in it over the last 3 years, but it seems it all goes away and only clay and rocks are left behind.

What to do to fix the soil? What should I add? I can till the garden with our tractor, but it doesn't go too deep. Should I just pile good dirt on top of the clay?

Thanks.

 

[Life is Good!]

Sounds like our soil here!

We raised our beds 10" high, filled with potting soil, compost, chicken bedding, well rotted manure from our neighbor's horses and more compost. The thing that has helped the most is to top the gardens with mulch. Add worms if you have to (if using your own compost, you won't need to add worms, they're in there). The worms LOVE the mulch and reproduce like crazy, which means more dirt for your garden!

It's taken nearly a dozen years now, but we've got REAL dirt - anywhere mulch has been. I cannot tell you how much mulch I've spread on this property over those years - how many hundreds of bags we've purchased and pushed around with a rake....ugh.....but it's worth the end result. Good dark dirt. Neighbor's don't have dirt, they still have clay. We've got dirt because of those lovely worms!

Good luck, it's not easy, but well worth the efforts. But I know the raised beds helped get better harvests.

 

[sandspoultry]

We have the yellow eastern NC clay here in our garden, for the last 6 years I have been putting all the chicken manure in it every time we clean out the houses and in the fall all the leaves in the yard. They are mostly oak and maple leaves, they give us enough to put a layer down about a 1 foot deep in the garden. I run the tiller thru the garden a couple times in the winter when it's dry enough and the leaves are pretty much gone by spring. We do have 2 gardens a spring and summer and we rotate them every year, the spring garden gets cover cropped every summer. It's taken time but the soil is loose, drains well and warms up quick in the spring. I did notice over the years that the soil got "better" from the bottom up. If you dug down to the depth of the tiller tines there was a layer above the clay that that was nice dark rich soil and over time that layer got thicker and thicker. It just takes time.

 

[nocalroo]

dig trenches 2'-3' wide and 12''-20'' deep remove the clay ad a layer of 2"-3" layer of large gravel for excess water to drain then add 4 parts soil conditioner, 1 part chicken manure, 1 part organic compost (leaf pile, kitchen scraps, coffee grounds), 1 part horse manure 1 part drainage (perlite, volcanic stone, crushed brick all #1 size). once you have layered these components in the trenches mix them I have done this by hand but have also used a rototiller, go for a good even color. This is a decent first crop soil mixture you should also mulch your garden with old leaves or even a bail of alfalfa will do wonders for next years garden just add a little more #1 sized drainage each year to keep it from getting compacted, you need water to drain in clay soil.

 

[jerryse]

Try garden gypsum it is available at garden stores. May or may not be at some of the big box stores. Use like lime . It breaks the chemical bond on clay allowing it to crumble. I have yellow clay and use it once a year in the spring. There used to be a brick yard in this area. They mined the clay for bricks. Mulch and other things mentioned are a big help also.

 

[1muttsfan]

I also have heavy cold clay, with the addition of heaps of jagged rocks. The only way a garden will grow here is by raising it. Use rocks, logs, pavers, or treated lumber for edging to raise your bed, 10-12" will make a world of difference. I started by digging out around 6-10" of the clay, edging the garden, then filling in with topsoil mixed with generous amounts of rotted horse manure, compost, old potting soil, and anything else that is rich and well-draining. You will see a huge improvement in your plants.

 

[1muttsfan]

This is one of my vegetable gardens, you can see the pile of manure just dumped in on the right waiting to get tilled in, as well as a few eggplants that were looking for a bathing spot.

 

[1muttsfan]

Here is another option for you - i am eyeing this for some border gardens around the edge of the yard

http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/

 

[lazy gardener]

If you buy purchased mulch, it's much more affordable to buy it by the cubic yard from a landscaping company. Many companies will deliver. More economical options include shredded landscape trimmings (like from road maintenance crews), mulch hay, litter from stables, shredded leaves, grass clippings. I agree, over time adding deep mulch will eventually improve any soil. To OP, I might add that you might need to improve the drainage of your garden site, then build the soil from there. Does water drain into the garden site? Does the garden site get full sun? Repeated tilling will slap that clay into an inpenetrable hard pan, so moisture can't drain below the depth of the tiller tines. How big is your garden site? How often do you till it? Can you take part of the garden, or all of it out of production for a season to try to fix the problem. You might try planting some heavy duty green manure crops to break up that hard pan. Contact your local county extension service for a list of green manure crops that would work well with your soil. You might also need to do some land work to route water away from the garden, and install some drain tile around the perimeter. All expensive fixes, but in the long run worth it if the garden site is otherwise ideal. It depends on how much you want to invest in the project and what your gardening goals are. Lastly, is your garden in the BEST location for you to grow a garden? I wish you the best of luck. I had a garden that was a far cry from ideal, with too much shade and root penetration from near by trees, heavy clay soil, and it took way too long to dry out enough to work the soil in the spring. I worked the soil for about 20 years, and it did improve, but not to my expectation. I finally moved the garden, it now gets full sun, has a gentle south slope, the soil is sandy loam, I can get in to it at least a month before any of my neighbors can touch their gardens, and it produces much better than the old garden did, even though it is smaller.

 

[TXchickmum]

We have clay soil, also. -have raised beds for our vegetable gardens. -also, raised the beds just a bit for our flower gardens and fruit vines. (We planted our blueberries in whiskey barrels since they need very acidic soil. -planted them in pure peat moss.) Our gardens have thrived!

A nearby city has a wonderful program for purchasing soil (called dyno dirt) and mulch.

http://www.cityofdenton.com/departments-services/departments-q-z/water-utilities/dyno-dirt

We purchase by the truckload and till it into our soil. -add tons to the raised beds. It is very, very economical! There may be similar options from municipalities near your area.