Rent a Rototiller or buy one (link URL below). It will rip out all roots, rocks and weeds. You can then till in some compost, add organic nutrients like Rock Phosphate, green sand, Blood Meal, Bone meal and you have a great start. If you have very bad soil, add in some vermiculite (expensive) but it will greatly improve your soil quality. Alternatively you can use raised beds but that drives the cost up as you have to buy soil as well as the hardware for setting up the raised beds. Here is a link that might be useful: Light weight but powerful tiller

Jay, Glad that's settled. I was afraid you were telling me to appreciate my clay and I was thinking that you were losing your mind. LOL I hate clay with a passion, but the sandy soil here is so prone to nematodes that it isn't even an option for a serious gardener. I am sure if I keep working at the clay and amending it then maybe one day I'll have something that passes as soil. For me, KB produces just like Brandywine, which is to say it barely produces at all. I know I've tried it three different years. Maybe all three years were bad years? I don't remember. I'd love to quit watering in order to get better flavor, but in our heat and with our soil, if you stop watering, they die. I will get decent flavor from most, superb flavor from others in any given year. My best tomatoe weather is rain through late May or early June and then just a little rain (but some rain!) after that. The low rainfall makes for better flavor. However, when there's no rainfall and I have to water, I find myself balancing on a tightrope between watering enough to keep the plants alive and producing and,yet, not watering so much that flavor is negatively impacted. The watering issue is where I don't understand the Earthbox/Earthtainer growers. They claim they get good tomato flavor, but I'm not buying it. Since their soil is always wet, the flavor cannot be as good as what you or I get in a good year. I did notice that Raybo is trialing a lot of soil mixes this fall to see if one or the other will give better flavor, so I think he finally is conceding that tomato plants in SWCs are somewhat watered down in flavor. In what has to be one of the most perverse actions on the face of the earth, if it ever stops raining I am going to try to move some clay (if I can dig it, and having it wet will help) to part of my band of sandy soil and add it to the sand to help the sand hold water better. I wish we had a bigger band of sand but "ya gets what ya gets" and clay is what we got. Barbara, Oh, I didn't take it as advice...just as curiosity. There are several reasons I haven't used sulphur or lime or gypsum and they have to do with long-term soil health. Hugelkultur beds would be preferable to rototilling down into the soil except that, if your soil is dense like mine, the roots stop when they grow down deep enough to hit the dense clay. So, unless your bed is high/tall, you're likely to have shallowly rooted plants. That's one issue. When I made a hugelkultur bed, it started out high/tall but shrank down fairly rapidly except for the rotted logs/sticks on the bottom. I like to make hugelkultur beds to restore drainage gullies where erosion has occurred. I've been doing that for sevearal years in part of our pasture that has serious erosion issues. I don't plant those beds though. I build them and let native plants spring up there as they may since the whole point is to rehab that area. That whole heat eats compost thing makes the hugelkultur beds degrade more quickly here than they do in a less extreme climate. As long as you're willing to keep layering on tons of material from the top down, though, I'd think it would work. Remember that in order for compost to be eaten by heat, it needs air. That's why humus/compost/organic matter in soil breaks down more slowly if the soil is not routinely turned over with a plow, tiller, shovel, etc. Soil that isn't turned over has a lower oxygen level so decomposition is more slow. With a hugelkultur bed, since it sits above grade and has chunky logs on the bottom, I'd guess it will decompose a bit more quickly than organic matter below grade level because it has more air flow. I just don't know how much more quickly that would occur. In our woodland, we have 6-10" of the soft, springy, cushion of humus, compost, twigs, leaf mold, etc. on top of red clay. Locals who know tell me these trees along our creek have been growing about 60 years, so 60 years of natural decomposition of woody material have given the forest that 6-10" layer of fabulous soil surface. You can duplicate that over a few years with a hugelkulture bed and I think you'll get slower decomposition but don't know exactly how much more slowly. Mulching will help a lot, both with erosion prevention and it should help 'seal' (not tightly, but still....) the hugulkulture bed and slow down air movement. Still, compost happens whether it is happening below or above ground. Dawn

It could take a year, or more, for the roots on many invasive plant species, such as Bishops Weed to die out. It can take that long even with "weed killers", especially with the plants that will shut off the flow of sap when the plant detects that a poison has been applied. One of the reason most of those "weed killers" do not work as well as the manufacturer attempts to make you believe so you spend money on their product and still have the "weed" problem. Some "weeds" produce lots of seeds as well as grow as biennuals or perennials while others protect the roots, where energy is stored for new growth, until the plant finds the sunlight it needs to photosynthesize the nutrients the plant needs to grow. Eliminating a plants access to light, which the plant needs to grow, is the best way to kill it, as well as the least expensive method.

Oh my, I remember the day when I moved into my new rental. Both the front and the backyard were full of weeds, and I also noticed that there were a lot of squirrels among these weeds. They were so annoying! I always pull the weeds by hand. I think this is the most reliable way to get rid of them. But, to get rid of the squirrels I needed help. I called the guys from wildlife removal and they took care of them immediately. Now I even have my own small garden, with lots of fresh veggies, which are always a better choice than the ones from the market.