How do you garden in clay?

Florida native here moving soon to the Columbia area. I understand some areas are sandy and some have clay. Help! How does one garden in clay? I've never had soil that didn't drain well. Will I need to build raised beds? How hard will it be to till in amendments?

Thanks,
Leslie

Hey Leslie - I lucked out up here in Newberry - I have no clay - but I do have hardpan - it's pretty hit n miss in our area on whether it's clay or hardpan...I actually had to build some raised beds because the tiller could not make it thru the hardpan....but I am glad I created raised beds in the front now...the raised bed is xeric and the rain water runs off it the beds that need more moisture and were poor hardpan soil areas - so it worked well for me

When your househunting this weekend you'll just have to check out the yard and see if it'ls clay or not= bring a shovel LOL I mean guys check homes out for termites sticking their penknife in the wood - why shouldn't us gals dig a hole an check out the soil LOL

OOOO. Great idea! We have a couple of places to check out in Newberry. It's farther than DH wanted to drive in to work, but he loved the town.

I've got all clay. And hardpan. I've hired young, virile men to roto-till (until the roto-till gave up and so did they). I've coerced middle-aged, cupcake soft men to roto-till (yeah, you guessed it--he's the handsome man to whom I'm married....), I've built lasagna beds and hauled loads of soil and prayed and cried and, well, you get the picture.....Clay soil, its a curse--until you realize that, at least, it does hold nutrients and moisture well!

Seriously, my advice--raised beds or lasagna gardening are really the most satisfying way to deal with it. If you must dig it, get the biggest man and the biggest roto-tiller you can find. Dig it well, when its relatively dry. Add tons of compost, organic materials and some lime (assuming your clay is acidic). Dig it again. Grow a cover crop. Dig it in. Do that annually for about 5 years and you'll have great soil!

LaLambchop - (Just LUV your user id!)

We moved here from New York and I "taught" Earth Science too!
But alas to my chagrin, no quantities of degrees or studies could have prepared me for the realities of gardening in clay.

First notice what color your clay actually is.
The Red clay does have more nutrients and seems to be easier to manage than the tan/gray variety (heavy clumps).
when digging and hit the tan/gray
- Ive found It impossible to work with: just replace with garden soil.

After that analysis: amend, Amend, AMEND
. . .did I mention to amend?
Soil conditioner is a MUST for me. Many in our development just have several truck loads of good garden soil installed on top and start from there.
Hindsight - they may have had the right idea.
- (the developers of our area did not install decent soil on our site - just slapped some sod of bermuda grass on top of some of the worst stuff you can imagine.)

but I digress. . .

I do soil conditioner, garden soil and whatever-is-in-your-yard mix.
Depending on the water needs of the plant and location (direct sun),
you may consider adding water retention crystals to the bottom of the planting area. Mulching IS a must to keep plants from not drying/ frying in this heat and sun (the clay does hold water but not in a manner that is good for a plant).

My best success story about trying to retain moisture is putting mulch over landscape fabric that covers a planted area.
Used it on our front beds with Direct FULL Sun. WOW!

oh my best BEST secret - a cute tiller we got recently from hsn or qvc.
It can handle our needs very well and presently is the only way I can realistically consider continuing any gardening attempts.
used properly, it can save back arms and numerous other body parts!

Hope this helps!!
Good Luck!

This message was edited Jun 19, 2009 11:48 PM

The folks in Columbia are among the friendliest around, Lamb, It really is a nice place to live.

You asked me about what Zone - I technically am a 7b in Whitehall over by Piney Grove Rd, but I have parts of my yard that are definitely an 8. We have a brick house and patio with a low brick a wall - Near that are I had Mandevillas come back - one in a pot and basically uncovered all winter, the other in the ground and heavily mulched. They are supposed to be 8b-9 plants and are treated as annulas here, put 'em in the ground and see what happens!
The area that you are looking at near Irmo has some cold low spots - one of the Wunderground weather stations can be as much as 10 degrees colder in the winter and just 2 miles apart. I am sure that they are in a dip. That station is over near the Ascot area that you were looking in. It is very rolling terrain, so depending on your exposure, you will have large differences in your temperature.

Clay Soil: There is a product (various brand names) called pelleted gypsum. Comes in 40 lb bags. Cheapest at Lowes or Nurseries Carolina in Aiken (only if you are in the area) It expands when mixed with clay. (be sure to store it in a dry place once opened). Mixed with Pine Fines (AKA Soil Conditioner) it improves the soil to a tremendous degree.
So in my beds (I have yellow clay) for each 4x4 -to- 4x6 area I use this thumbnail formula:
--- 1 bag of pine fines (soil conditioner - small pieces/ground bark)
---enough pelleted gypsum to look like heavy sprinkles on a cupcake
Dig down as far as you can (at least 6 inches, 12 is better - deeper for shrubs) and mix in well. Add more of each if really clayey - gypsum and pine fines will keep it from clumping - like when you cut Crisco into flour for piecrust - the clay, in case you have not guessed, is the Crisco, except thicker. And stickier. The GandPF will also keep the clay from sticking to your shovel or mattock. (invest in a good mattock, and a shorthandled one~~ you will need it)
Then I add approx 1/4 bag mushroom compost + 2" of almost rotted leaves and/or garden compost (or one bag Mushroom compost)
Also add in about 2" of good topsoil or bedding mix (I buy it by the yard at The Bark yard near Lake Murray Dam).
When you plant, add more pinefines to your holes and mix in a little. Add some time=-released fertilizer and you should be good! Mulch well with 4-8 sheets of newspaper, dampen it and cover with pinestraw, or other mulch of your choice. Really keeps the weeds down. The earthworms will come and make short work of the newspaper.

If you use a good layer of newspaper you should not need LSFabric. Plus you can plant through it without having to cut it. I use LS Fabric only in areas where I know I am done digging and that the soil is good. The newspaper does a better job of keeping in moisture level even and cool, and the weeds down. I had a whole bed just "lift up" the LSFabric because of this one weed that was under it. Heavy newspaper took care of the problem. I also use large pieces of cardboard the same way.

Now what I really only use the LS fabric for is to line crates or mesh to make containers. Hold the dirt in just fine and breathes well.

I also do a huge amount of gardening in large pots and containers until I know where in the yard the plant is happiest. Raised beds (either held in by wood, stone, brinks, edgers, etc) are wonderful. There are a lot of places (Wingards is one) where they will send a dump truck, you say dump there, and then plant. Figure how much labor you are going to do - if you have less than 4 inches of topsoil bemire you hit clay, it is not worth it to dig is out. Call a truck. Raise the bed. That is all that pots do.
Otherwise your plants will just sit in a bathtub.
Oh, and do buy yourself a jumbo bag of the Watersorb-type crystals. They are the greatest! I got some at a coop last year and am still using them. For those places that are just too far from the hose or any type of pot.

More on Soil: Keep on tossing the Coffee Grounds and egg shells in it, too.

Note: The Clemson Extension agency in town will test your soil for free. They can tell you if you need lime, etc. or not.

Good books: The book by Margo Rochester "Earthly Delights: Gardening by the Seasons the Easy Way," is a must-have on the bookshelf. Unfortunately we lost her last year- A local English teacher and Master gardener, she was 72 and gardening nearly to the day that she suddenly passed from pancreatic cancer (3 weeks from diagnosis to passing away). The whole book pertains to the Columbia area. I never got to meet her but she is sorely missed. http://www.heraldonline.com/109/story/920446.html

Also any thing by Felder Rushing. His "Tough Plants for Southern Gardens is wonderful, as is "Passalong Plants". He is fun to read, too, droll and sorta snarky at the same time. Very down to earth and good common sense, easy ways to make a great garden in our (sometimes) challenging conditions. I had a chance to see his talk at our city's Garden Symposium this past March. He is a hoot!

Bookmark the Clemson Website, they have tons of info on local stuff. http://www.clemson.edu/extension/hgic/

Looking forward to gardening with you!
Lorie

Lorie, Thanks for mentioning my dear friend Margot Rochester. I hope you and everyone else will read her second book, published posthumously this past January. It is called "Down to Earth" and it is wonderful resource for all gardeners.

Wow! You guys are awesome!!! Thanks so much for all the info. I'm a little intimidated by the idea of all of that amending, but as we may well rent for 2-3 years I'll stick to the pots if need be. :) I breed daylilies and will be bringing 300-400 named varieties up from my Florida house plus a few hundred seedlings. I have been associated with Dan Hansen/Ladybug Daylilies for a few years now and he usually grows 1,000-1,500 seedlings a year for me, but I'll need to wean off of that so I can see them when they bloom. I understand daylilies do very well in this area. If anyone wants seedlings let me know next year. LOL

Thanks again. I look forward to getting to know you all.

Leslie

Daylilies do exceptionally well here. Keo's mom breeds them, plus there are many more awesome breeders here in town or nearby.

Who is Keo's mom? I know the Jeffcoats and Memory Jordan are here.

The soils on the NE and SE sides of Columbia are a little easier to amend as they are made up primarily of sand. Singing Oaks Nursery (outstanding DL growers) is NE of Columbia in Blythewood. You also might want to consider Kershaw County (Camden) they have great soils there.
It all depends however on where the job location will be.

Keonkale here on DG. His parents have a DL farm near the lake; I think it is between Irmo and Chapin.

Cool! Today we looked at houses in Irmo, Chapin, Lexington, Newberry and Columbia. We haven't found one yet but we're narrowing in on what we like.

I like the area. It's so green and I like the hills.

If you can garden in clay without cussing, you are my hero!

I may not cuss, but I sure do a heck of a lot of mumble fussing!!^_^

Mumble Fussing!! ROTFLMAO! That is hilarious, I have never heard that word! What a great description!
LOLOLOL

I especially like it when I try to check things out in the garden and it is just wet enough so that when I walk back to the house I look like Frankenstein walking with all that clay stuck to my shoes.

Mumble fussing! I love it.
We found a house today that we just love but tough, tough soil. I dug around and I think it's clay to the surface. I may have to build raised beds but the house is worth it.

I'm loving South Carolina!!!

LaLamby, are you in columbia now?

Yes'm. We'll be here until the weekend. I'll d-mail you my cell.

pyromomma!
- Where HAVE you been all of my gardening in Carolinas life??
you have success growing in tan clay??
Im a listening!

may try some of that gypsum.

for the life of me i dunno WHY - clay soil gets the advice of: sand.
for me it was the worst thing. now i m told it should be green sand.
not sure what that is.
what I do know is
Better Homes and Gardens site advises the use of sand in clay soils. clay + sand + our heat = cement.
been there; done that!

im so glad I know about DG to prevent more horror stories!

We have never added sand to ours and it was clay 6 years ago. Now it is loos brown great soil.

We put grass clippings, manure, fall leaves, plant remains and till all this in. Over time it has changed our dirt into great stuff.

I can't see sand adding any nutritional value to the dirt just loosening it up. But actually when sand gets wet it gets pretty solid. You want to add organic matter so that the oxygen and nutrional value of the soil increases.

If you add sand to clay you get adobe. I found that out. Does NOT work!
The pelleted gypsum does a good job of keeping the clay from binding back together. You do not add much. A $6/40 lb bag )HD or Lowes) goes a long long way.

Compost, pine fines etc helps to keep it loose, gets the earthworms in and you can really make some fine soil. Add trimmings, coffee grounds, etc to a composter, or even just do as my granny did - take the trimmings and peels, crushed egg shells and coffee grounds from yesterday's meals out to the garden, dig a shallow hole near a plant, dump it in and mix it with the dirt - small amounts here and there. It will compost in place and over time builds in really nice organic matter. I never saw earthworms last year, now they are everywhere - big fat ones. I love using the pine fines, they are cheap (HD for about $4 a bag), easy, smell good, and really help to break up the clay. I also add it one to one with the cheapest planting mix for my containers. (got that hint from Felder Rushing's book)

I will clear roots out of the holes that I dig, but I try to mix some decomposing leaves from under my redtips or from the neighbor's sweetgum (picking the sputnicks out) in, too. Not heavy, but like the nuts in a brownie mix.

Then I mulch mulch mulch with newspaper, covering that with a good layer of bark or pinestraw.

I have one bed in the front done like that and it hardly needs watering, because the newspaper keeps it cool and moist. My other bed that I am working on does not have the mulch, and the plants get wilty pretty fast. I have packed just about all that I can in that bed for now, so will be mulching it this weekend.

does the pine fines lower your ph?

not very much and most of the plants that I use have a fairly wide tolerance for ph. The addition of the gypsum and the compost really helps that too.

. . . ok so Im the last to get that memo. ha ha ha

Id still like to know why does Better Homes and Garden continue to advise adding sand to this clay soil.??
I thought the to be a reputable source for things.
. . .yet another "go figure" moment.

Their recipes are not very good either.

well, here's another place to tell my story. I grow mostly TB irises.

when first planting irises, I'd go buy bagged topsoil and pour it out atop hardpan in long lines. into these lines I'd heel in newly received irises until they could be planted. worked GREAT. it was rich black well draining topsoil.

two unopened bags of topsoil got "lost" to the rear of the temp bed. Found them 2.5 years later. They were hard solid clumps of red clay, just like my local soil, only about 1/2 the volumn. all the organics were gone.

back then - researched all I could, then prepped my beds by renting a rototiller, rototilling, poured in bagged: tons of bagged topsoil, soil conditioner, manure, compost, and sand, and rototilling again. back breaking work. that bed did ok, but when it came to weeding, it was quickly evident I was back to mostly clay at the end of two years. about then the "lost" bags were discovered and the lightbulbs lit up in my head!

NOW TODAY: I hire a fellow with a small Kubota that has both bucket and scoop. he gets the clay broken to a distance of about twice to 2.5 times the depth (10-14") that any rototiller has been able to do. and he seems to have fun doing it compared to DH or I tearing our bodies apart managing a rototiller. I haul in all the compost, builder's sand, and horse manure I can get, maybe 3 trips in my pickup truck each, and pile it up where I used to put the temp beds. [I buy compost locally made by the City of Raleigh yard waste center - man does that stuff grow great plants -$21 a truckload. Buy bulk sand $18/1 ton. have 4 stables giving me horse manure - come and get it free. grab free woodchips, free mulch, or cheap City of Raleigh mulch (made from storm debris) and pile it up for a year or two to make my own soil conditioners] after rototilling twice, he uses the bucket and spreads my piles out, then rototills over the top twice again. Voila! in 45 mins. he had 3 new beds done for me, all about 15'x40'.

I figure, if the bagged topsoil, after 3 years, then I was buying mostly CLAY. why haul it and cart those ungainly bags around?

This idea came mostly from Witherspoons Rose Gardens. they are the premier growers in NC for roses. They recommend this formula for prepping a rose bed in our clay soil. Roses LIKE red clay.

rototill the soil WELL.

pour on a minimum of 1 bag of composted manure for every 2 plants, make sure it's aged and you can use as much as you want

pour on 1 bag of soil conditioner (which is really decomposed mulch or more finely processed mulch, so I buy mulch CHEAP and pile it up for two years later) for every 5 SF of bed

pour on one bag of Permatill for every 5 SF of bed

add as much compost as you want

pour on 1 18 lb bag of bone meal for every 12 plants.

add some polymer crystals - to help absorb too much rain -roses like dry feet inbetween rains

rototill again

heap the beds UP at least 12" or more - they don't have to be raised beds in a frame, but since clay doesn't drain well, any time you level the bed at the ground level, you've created a catch basin for rain and your plants will just sit in water.

FOR IRISES: I add the sand. irises like a more neutral pH and seem to like sand. But, as Keith Keppel's partner Phil told me, adding sand to clay = concrete. Phil told me 1/3 sand, 1/3 clay, 1/3 compost was the way they did it, then replenish the compost with each plowing after that. they had someplace local that gave them corn cobs for their compost pile and had it about 8' high! Plant Delights has compost piles 15' high! anything not sent to the burn pile goes straight to the compost pile.



This message was edited Jun 13, 2009 12:22 PM

I forgot - I add lots of pellet gypsum, too, in the irises

my question for this group - what's the difference between hardpan and clay? I can't get a shovel into either one! Hardpan is what I consider is down about 8" - it takes a pickaxe, a rototiller won't touch it.

oh, and I water any section of clay scheduled for break up for 3 hours, then let it dry for 2 to 3 hours. That's if I'm going to be breaking it.

Thank you SO MUCH for sharing your experience. I'm going to tag this for when we get started.

All these stories sound oh-so-familiar, but I didn't see anyone mention a product called Perma-till, although I think that may have been what Pyromomma was talking about. I haven't used it too much, but definitely have used it where good drainage is essential i.e. iris beds etc. It is basically a gravel-type (appearance) product that helps by creating airspaces in the clay in order that water can penetrate.

Also, don't forget about lasagna gardening. I've found this a great approach in areas where I don't want to invest tons of effort and am not in a hurry to plant. I rototill the area, lay down a thick layer of newspaper/cardboard as weed block and just treat it like a compost pile for a year or so, throwing tons of organic matter on the spot. After a year, I just plant it. The plants grow mostly in the organic matter at first, but gradually the worms attracted to the organic matter begin to break up the clay and their movement adds nutrients and distributes the organic matter down into the clay. Takes a long, long time, but meanwhile the plants are happily growing.

And then, of course, there's dynamite.....but I digress!

that is what we used, Yote. Dynamite, worked great until the neighbors hose shifted
3 1/2 inches and they called the sherriff's dept.
Oh well, I can always quit putting grub killer down and the voles will airate the clay.

thanks Yotedog! I KNEW I'd left something out of Witherspoon's recipe for rose beds. It was the Permatill - have editted my thread above to add it

can't afford Permatill in my iris beds, I'd go broke extra quick. I use the home made soil conditioner. and encourage worms.

Where in the Carolinas can you buy that permatill in bulk? I would like to get about 2 yards of it!

It says that it is expanded slate, is there any other brand?

I understand Woodleys has it but there is no place down here along the coast that I know of. There is another product (or brand) but for the life of me I can't rememer the name.

I want some for "permanent" containers; those I won't change out each year. Regular potting mix breaks down after a while and the plantings sink deeper and deeper into the container. I am told mixing in products that won't break down, like permatil, helps that.

do not laugh at this, but I've been using packing peanuts in deep containers. They act like drainage rocks in the bottom, don't break down, and don't add any weight at all.

recently upended a container planted 3 years ago. the roots went mostly around the peanuts, but some went straight through them! they look hilarious

Just be careful you have the regular styrofoam peanuts. Do not try this with the ones that break down. They are made of corn starch and they make a terrible sticky mess. (Don't ask how I know this, LOL).

LOLOL Ardesia, I did the same thing!!!!! What a mess! And the look on my face! That "uh ho!" but you cannot stop it, there is no way to keep them from melting! There is no unringing of that bell! LOL

I ALSO use the STYRO packing peanuts - what a great way to reuse and recycle!!
I also will cap up empty water bottles and do the same as filler (but they are bulkier). The peanuts do give the roots a chance to breathe,too. I love using the big pots, they do not dry out as much and most of the plants do really well in them. But why waste all that potting soil. 15 inches deep does just as well as 20 inches, and that 5" can do a good job in another pot!.

I do love the watersorb crystals, too.

Has anyone tried upending a smaller pot as filler?

If you are in the Raleigh area, Logan's nursery has Perma-till. Not cheap, but you don't need a ton. I don't think its available in bulk--just bagged.