When I was a kid my dad and I grew very successful gardens in the clay soil of western PA.

The main thing with clay is drainage. If you don't get standing water you might be surprised at how well your garden grows -- especially if you till in a lot of organic material.

You'll have difficulty with root crops in heavy soil, but unless you're planting directly into the clay many other things will enjoy the richness of the topsoil.

If there's really no usable topsoil above the clay or you have standing water after every rain then raised beds would be more effective than buckets because of the more efficient use of space and the greater room the roots will have to spread.

Instead, why don't you build raised beds. I am partial to the square foot gardening method, where you fill the raised beds with 1/3 each of compost, vermiculite and peat moss. That way you don't have to concern yourself at all with your lousy soil. There is some initial time and money involved, but after that it's easy. This method certainly would be easier, more productive, and better looking than burying 27 buckets in the ground.

Here is a link that might be useful: Square Foot Gardening forum

Why are you planning to bury the buckets halfway? Do you have a lot of free buckets you're trying to use? Probably it will work but not as well as the other suggestions that have been made.

i have a neighbor who cuts the bottoms off of used styrofoam coolers and turns them into raised planters. We get a lot of visitors that purchase the coolers for short term use and leave them behind. He sees this a good way to get some use out of the coolers and keep them out of the landfill. He grows really nice vegetables.

The key is just keep adding organic material each year, and your soil will get better and better each year.

Start with mixing in alot of spagnam peat moss and organic humus. Spagnam peat moss does wonders for clay soil but is unfortunately a non renewable resource, but you can get it in those light rectangular cubes from most nurseries/box stores. Start a compost pile just for putting into your garden in the future, with pulled weeds, leaves, some grass clippings.

Mix a lot of organic material and build up the soil into somewhat of a raised bed, you should be able to grow stuff okay this year, mulch with leaves or grass clippings, and in a couple of years will have great soil.

It is not impossible, keeping stuff in containers will not help the soil get better. If you containers have poor drainage it will be worse than planting them in the ground.

Start now, and at least plant something. Green beans help improve the soil. Even if you get lousy results this year it helps to get started improving your garden soil this year.

I'm in upstate NY and my garden started as all clay. A good thing to do is plant lots od beans and turnips. Anyplace there's a space, plant them. The beans and turnips will add nitrogen to the soil and the roots will help break up the clay. Don't pull them out at the end of the season. just till them or dig them under. In the meantime add as much compost, mushroom mulch and cow and or horse poo (seasoned) as you can. It'll help immensely.

I added a new section to my garden last year using lasagna techniques (layers of newspapers to block out weeds, layer of commercial cow manure, layer of mushroom mulch (commercial), layer of top soil (commercial). Each layer, except the newspaper is a couple inches thick. The newspaper layer was maybe 6 layers of paper. It was very effective and now I have good soil in that area

Clay is wonderful for retaining nutrients in your soil. So much so, I rarely ever use synthetic fertilizer (maybe a little every couple of years. I'd say yes, the buckets are a crazy idea. :) Improve your soil by adding as much organic matter as you can get a hold of and watch your soil do it's magic!

I've heard that clay is actually better than the other extreme - sand - not that I would know by personal experience, since I've always had to garden in clay. But clay soil can hold a lot more nutrients than courser soils, where the nutrients leach out faster.

I agree with what everyone else has said. Put in some raised beds and put some loose soil in there to get you started, and then keep adding organic matter and let nature do the rest of the work. Aided by the OM you add, worms and plant roots will start penetrating deeper into the soil and loosening it up. Clay soil can end up being awesome with a bit of time and TLC.

Personally, I think clay soil is more of a nuisence to the gardener than to the plants. From what I've seen, plant roots don't have a whole lot of trouble growing through all kinds of stuff. Maybe some plants are tougher than others, but I figure if a tree root can break a concrete sidewalk, at least SOME kinds of veggies out there can penetrate clay.

I agree with kaptainkr.

You can either put a lot of time and money into trying to mix stuff with your existing soil. Or spend the same time and effort mixing the compost, vermiculite and peat moss and building some boxes out of 2x8s.

In addition to the GardenWeb Forum link above, also consider visiting: www.squarefootgardening.com

Here is a link that might be useful: GrafixMuse's Garden Spot

CLAY IS GREAT !!!!

The benefits of water retention and rich minerals far outweigh the heavyness. I just piled on the organic matter and tilled once. Keep adding and let the worms do their thing. If you think you don't have worms, just check back in a few months and you'll be amazed by the jumbo worms once you've given them plenty to eat.

in lots of ways the bucket idea sounds like raised beds in reverse, still sounds like a lot of work plus by the sounds of it the buckets are placed into the ground so they remain?

why not simply do raised beds have a look at the bale bed presentation on our site.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

@neohippie,

I've had both and clay is far better than sand. Check out my thread about waterproof soil.

Clay can be a pain to work with, but the plants love it.

Lots of good feedback in here...thanks everyone! I know the bucket idea probably sounded stupid but remember I'm new ! LOL

I am thinking the raised beds are the way to go. Should I do anything to the existing ground before making the raised beds or just make the raised beds then fill in with soil/compost/sand? Should I till the existing ground before adding the raised beds, or after...or not at all?

Also, a couple of you mentioned grass clippings. Does it have to be recent clippings? I have a few large piles of cut grass clippings that have been collecting on the back of my property for the past few months from when I cut my lawn. It's pretty nasty smelling...is it ok to use that?

I would try out the buckets.

I have alkaline clay soil, but I've amended it with so much compost and coffee grounds that it has become dark and friable.

I have discovered that adding lots of coffee grounds will denature the clay, but that many crops won't grow well in the resulting soil. I suspect it's the caffeine. Some crops do grow well in that coffee denatured clay soil; corn, potatoes, tomatoes. But beans, pumpkin and similar crops don't do so well.

I would try adding lots of humic acid to the soil to help condition the clay. The big box home improvement stores sell it but you have to hunt it down because it's not a well known technique. And you might want to try growing a green manure in a plot before trying to garden in it.

The grass clippings? Good stuff. Tune into the soil/compost forum and so some searches about composting. I've been composting for 8 years. I'm now ready to try the Interbay Mulch method. Read the FAQ and do a search.

Clay is good stuff. If you work at adding organic materials like your grass clippings, eventually you'll have good garden soil. Be sure to do an analysis to see what it needs; pH NPK.

Grass clippings are great. They feed the worms and bacteria.

Even better, is to mix grass clippings with shredded leaves (or other "browns"), to make compost.

Oh, I should mention, its always a good idea to get a soil test and contact your local ag agent. The soil tests are free or cheap from the state ag department and your ag agent will tell you how to do it.

One other question I have, many of you discuss adding grass clippings and other compost material to the beds to improve the soil structure. This is before or after the planting season right? Once I plant my seeds and the vegetables are growing I can't mess with the soil right??

I think the raised beds would be less work than the buckets.

You could till the ground before you put the raised beds in, but I'm not sure if that's even necessary. Might depend on how deep you're going to make the raised beds, but if I were you I might just plop them on top. But I'm a lazy gardener. That clay will be much easier to till next year after it's been under a raised bed of veggies.

The nasty grass clippings are a great thing to have! If they're pretty rotten you could put them down at the botton of your beds before you fill them with soil, and they'll rot the rest of the way and add goodies to the soil.

Fresher grass clippings can be used for mulch. Spread them out to let them dry until they look like straw, and use that to mulch your plants. Then once the plants die in the fall, till everything in, they'll add more organic matter.

Clay is a great start. My "soil" was all clay. I added a lot of horse manure and it grows everything I want. I just add 3" per year and I'll cut down on that as it progresses. When I started I didn't have any worms, and now they're everywhere, after 3 years. Tilling in manure and mulching works. Now if the weeds didn't grow it would be easy.
Rick

I too have had both clay and sandy soil, and while the sandy soil is very easy to work, it's much less rich than clay soil and requires a lot of expensive soil amendments and fertilizers.

Good morning Hoytshooter. I used to live in Mt Clemens and then in St. Clair Shores, the latter having some of the densest clay you will see in Michigan....and it wasn't all that bad. In fact it responded very well to amendments. Back then, I just purchased some top soil for that first year, mixing it into only the first 5 inches or so. After that I just mixed in chopped leaves every year. Just mowing the leaves to chop them up and collecting them in the lawn mower bin. My neighbors were more than happy to let me mow their leaves as well. Lots of trees in the old neighborhood.

Count your blessings...clay is much easier to work with than sand. I like to say that sand eats amendments and belches dust.

Also, the bucket idea concerns me a bit. Even with lots of holes in the buckets, if your clay is that dense, you will have drainage problems. Plants are made of sturdy stuff. If you just break up the first few inches, they will start working on the deeper stuff for you that first year.