HeavyClay Soil got you Crying/Complaining?

My heavy Clay soil had me in utter despair.

thought about doing container garden - ONLY - but in our brutal heat with no irrigation - UUGGGHH!

but clicking around DG and 'found' this website/product/link
http://www.johnandbobs.com/ClayHard-Soil-Solutions-Kit_c_2.html

Im thinking bout getting their Soil Optimizer too.

just wanted to share

Definitely let us know how it works out if you get it. I, too, have a lot of clay in my back yard and would be interested in something to help improve my soil conditions without having to truck in a couple truckloads of soil and have it tilled up.

Yikes. Over a hundred bucks to treat 1000 sq ft? Plus shipping from California?

I checked the ingredients and you can buy everything in their kit locally, and some things you can get free (leaves, compost, etc) that provide the same thing.

Lastly, remember, with clay soil there isn't a one-time addition of anything that will give you prime results. It's an ongoing process, especially here in the South, and amendments will have to be added on a regular basis.

It might be a good company, hard to say since there are no reports in Garden Watchdog, but the items being offered are highly available in your own neighborhood, 50glee.

Shoe

I'm with Shoe...leaves, compost and some added composted cow poo + a mattox that my dh uses...Voila! Usable garden space:)

Yes... see if your local sanitation department offers free or low-cost compost or mulch. Then rent or buy a tiller and mix the organic matter into the clay. After a couple of years it gets easier and you can just dig it in with a shovel. Clay is not entirely a bad thing... it holds onto moisture and minerals, and once you incorporate enough organic matter it's much more amenable to growing plants than sandy soil.

I've thought about tilling up most of my backyard this fall and doing this very thing. It took 3 adults with two shovels and an auger about 4 hours to dig the hole for my 3'x5'x3' pond last summer! Now that I recall that fact, it makes sense that my husband gives me the hairy eyeball when I say I want to expand the pond and make it bigger! LOL

Guess ya better enjoy that pond as is, lol!!

Not gonna happen! LOL ... I'm determined to expand it and make it bigger. I can dig the hole myself if needed .... it'll take me awhile, but it's not a huge area. I'm basically connecting the two smaller ponds we have now; just need to dig out the middle area to connect them and make it one big one. :)

Now there's a 'can do' attitude. Much respect for that, lol! Let the dh give ya the 'hairy eyeball, now!! LOL!

Hubby would definitely agree that I have an attitude ... some days it's "can do" ... others, he calls it something else, LOL.

LOL! Give us all a shout when you finish...Maybe high tea by the pond? ;))

Do you have or can you borrow a small mantis type tiller? That is how we dug a large pond in pure kaolin clay. I would till up the clay and then dig, till and dig, till anld dig. You get the picture. :-)

That's pretty much what we did with the pond we put in last summer. My one friend used the auger to break up the clay, then a friend and I got in there with the shovels to remove the loose clay, and that's what we did for several hours -- alternate augering and shoveling. Hubby had 3 back surgeries last summer, so he wasn't a candidate for either chore. We used the removed clay from the pond hole to build up a small mound to put rock stream and waterfall into the pond.

I got a wild hair today, and put a small pond in my raised garden bed. I was going to covert the entire bed into a raised water garden, but I wasn't sure if it was strong enough or not. So half of it is a home to some of my elephant ears, and the other half has a couple bananas and the pond with a new lotus I picked up this afternoon. It's still a work in progress obviously, but I'm pleased with it so far. I'll add mulch tomorrow as well as a spitter to circulate the water a bit to help keep the skeeters down.

Clay soil can really be a pain in the a**. When I first moved to this house, I discovered that the builders had scraped most of the lot down to the hard-packed clay subsoil, which was basically just "soft rock" and completely unworkable. Not even grass would grow. I started dumping lime, compost, and pretty much any sort of organic materials I could find. The soil was so hard my little tiller could barely make a dent. I also hired a landscaping service with heavy-duty tillers to mix in some mulch/compost and they were also challenged to make a dent in it. Finally, after 10 yrs of working, I actually have nice, rich, deep soil in some places, and my yard can grow grass as long as it doesn't get too dry. But there are still a lot of problem areas where I can't dig down more than 8" before hitting almost rock. Really it's location, location, location... did your lot have rich soil before your house was built, and did the builder leave it alone or bulldoze it off to level another nearby lot.....

I was only 2 years old when my house was built, so I can't be sure what happened to the soil. ;-) My last house in Maryland though -- I know the builder took the topsoil offsite. It seems to be a standard practice up there that they have someone come in and scrape the property for the good topsoil (and it was good ... it was previously a huge farm), and then you end up needing to go back to a dirt company to have new top soil brought back in. And guess who's name the builder gave as a referral for getting good topsoil ... the same guy he had scrape it away in the first place. It's like it's a racket or something.

LOL, I watched a landscape company remove Palmetto trees from a neighbor's lot when they were clearing to build. Later I watched the same company plant Palmettos on said lot. My neighbors told me they got a deal and "only" paid $250 per tree. What a racket.

That is crazy, Ardesia! I think I'd have had the original trees saved and put in temporary homes until the build was done. I don't get people's (lack of) thinking, sometimes.

LOL, they are all moving here from far away and really do not know what is going on. After that incident I started calling the folks that were building on the street and making them aware that if they had any palmettos in their landscape plans to make sure they were't sold off. You can keep a palmetto heeled in for quite a while. All the builder has to do it put the tree on the edge of the property until it is time for the landscaper to plant them.

unfortunately builders are like so many others - just trying to make an additional buck . . . anyway possible.

i think it is despicable for the good topsoil to be removed leaving unsuspecting new home owners with this tan/gray material. Often these home owners are re-locating into NC area thus unfamiliar to these soil issues. Our development used to be a part of a farm. but when the land was sold the topsoil removed the quantity of which permitted them to begin a soil & amendments company which is thriving today.

Almost all in my development have stories of a nursery installing a tree or shrub - incorrectly (no proper amending the soil or bed preparation) and the tree/shrub died. - no refund of course.

Very little can be just-installed into this tan/gray clay without extensive conditioning and amending prior to planting.

- just adding my lamentations.