The only problem with amending heavy clay can be that you end up with that area collecting a pool of water because its the only non-clay area. This may not be as bad an issue if you don't get much rain. The only thing the gardeners might have done wrong would be not digging the initial hole 2 or 3 times the width of the plant pot. One alternative would be planting it in a mound of good soil.

Gary

I have probably some of the worst almost pure clay soil imaginable. I came up with a new method that seems to be working. I dig a large hole and then partially fill it with pea sized gravel. I make a volcano shaped mound inside the hole and then put the fruit tree on top of that. I then backfill the hole with a mix of clay and mulch or steer manure or potting soil or shredded bark or wood or whatever organic type stuff I can get on the broken bag pallets. Before when I just used planting mix or mulch as an amendment as bacteria ate up the organic ammendments the tree would gradually sink and end up with the graft union at or below the top of the soil level sitting in a hole. Since the gravel can't disappear the tree stays at the level it should be at. Plus I'm guessing the roots can grow very easily through the large spaces between the gravel particles. Never ever use sewage sludge based ammendments. I used it on one of my fruit trees and it died, and when I dug it up its roots had rotted off and a terrible putrid smell came from the hole.
One trouble is gravel is very expensive in small quantities, so I may try filling the bottom of the hole with pure perlite. There is a place in Paramount that sell a 4 cubic foot bag for $8.00, which would be $54 a cubic yard, which is less than what it would cost to have one cubic yard of gravel delivered.

Good points from both of you.

For my tropicals (BOP, GBOP, Tavellers Palm and Bananas) the system I've been using is that I amend the clay with a mixture of "Amend" from HD and Sand. I think the mixture I settled on was 50/25/25 Clay/Amend/Sand and that seemed to have worked really well for those plants in the ground. However for extra drainage I was thinking about 25/25/25/25 Clay/Amend/Sand/Perlite or just replacing the sand with perlite in the original 50/25/25. Or maybe 25/25/25/25 Clay/Amend/Cactus Soil Mix/Perlite. Lots of options there and they probably all work similarly though as you pointed out the more I amend with organics the more settling would become an issue.

Where is the place in Paramount you get Perlite that cheap from? That is a steal compared to HD (I pay around $4/cube ft) and Paramount is along my drive home.

As far as the hole pooling with water, that had occured to me too. I dig the holes pretty big and deep and since I live in California I mostly have full control over the water but we do have the occassional deluge/flood warning here so there's no telling what would happen if we got a ton of water and it all decided to go right into my fast draining hole.

Also, aside from that I guess is the remaining question about whether it would be safe to dig out the tree at all. The same gardener also planted my original Bird of Paradise directly in the clay without amending and that actually grew quite well. The tubers had penetrated several feet into the ground and the plant took a bit of shock when I transplanted it due to not being able to get all the roots out unharmed. I also know that in general most plants are putting out roots their first season in the ground so maybe that is the main reason why there isn't much growth.

Laurence

Paramount Perlite Company. 16233 Illinois Ave. They say they supply all the nursuries.

What I did was to dig a trench 3 ft deep, 3 ft wide, sections at a time around my property, then underneath that, I laid out aerators and drainage pipes that drains to the outside. The super heavy clay imaginable, I mixed it with gypsum, soil sulfur, sand, composted horse manure or composted steer manure, powdered charcoal, and whatever free compost the city is offering, mixed them up and placed them back. No problem of tree drowning ever. All citruses growing like crazy, bananas too, and blueberries. More than 350 different kinds of fruit plants can grow in my amended border soil. I now miss the heavy exercises that I used to do 7 years ago, that's my only regret.