What some refer to as gumbo is clay and clay that lacks adequate levels of organic matter will be hard to work.
What is the level of organic matter in your soil?

Do you walk in the bed? Walking in the bed will compact it no matter what you have. Install walking paths or stepping stones to work within the bed.
Over tilling destroys soil structure. Tilling destroys all the microbial system that you try to put in the ground via organics. Small clods are preferred to fine powder. I prefer a turning fork if I do it at all. The fact that you can till may mean the soil is not as compacted as you might think.
To much Nitrogen will speed up the decomposition of organic matter and the microbial life may starve as a result. Organic matter also aids in proper drainage and aeration. Compost is preferred to repetitive manure. (This is dependant on the N level in the manure)
To say you have clay soil is a very broad statement. There are high pH clays and low pH clays. If you have the high pH it could mean that there is an abundance of lime (calcite) which may be bonding the sandy loam particle together because of tillage. Sandy loam is top soil, leave it on top.
What I would do at this point is to add compost (on top), Add a good microbial stimulant, cover with mulch and stay out. Let the soil health be determined by the health of the plant. As the microbial system improves so will the tilth of the soil and the health of the plants. But you must have patients.
I've done it your way, I've learned to do it this way. The tiller is collecting dust.

Is the soil high in magnesium?

I have worked an old farm idea into my garden of doing green manures. I grow my veggies in rows, and sometimes the rows are not fully used by plants. Maybe because I just picked what was there, or didn't plant as much in a certain season. Having a pretty good idea about erosion and soil depletion, I started planting the rows with buckwheat, which has always been considered a soil builder. I just take a hoe and scrape a couple furrows in the row, hold a handful of seeds, and without being too fussy, drop them singly, into the furrows. Then take the hoe and scrape some soil over the seeds, tamp, and in a few days they're coming up! Most of the time, I'll do this towards the end of summer, and just let it grow until the frost kills it off. Then turn over in the Spring. But, I'll also have times where some footage is not being used early in the season, so then I plant the buckwheat. That planting will give the seeds needed for the next season. After the plants flower, wait for the seeds to turn a dark brown, and then, with a bag handy, pick the seedheads by scraping the seeds with your fingers into your bag. One thing to remember is if you know the soil row was used by a heavier feeder of nitrogen, the selection might be for alfalfa or soybean, which adds nitrogen to the soil. I plant red clover in the row, along with the buckwheat, which also works. I like the results in the way the soil moves more readily when using the hoe.

If you have clay and added sand, then it will just get harder. Instead add only organic matter. You will need to constantly add more organic matter to keep it from getting hard. Most people don't understand how much work it truly is. I add more organic matter monthly all over the garden areas in which I have my plants growing.

I have a lower corner of two gardens that are black and heavy soil. If you do plow or turn the soil, do it in the fall. It will mellow by spring...sometimes like sugar. If the soil is really sticky when wet, it may be too high in magnesium as magnesium is a soil tightener while calcium is a soil loosener.

Organic matter helps to loosen heavy soil. For my clayey loam I really liked the results of adding 3 inches of coarse/medium sand with 4 inches of local peatmoss and deeply mixing all these together with the topsoil. It loosened the soil immediately and ever since.

It sounds like a problem of too high a percentage of clay. You should add a lot of dry organic material and compost, never work the soil when wet, and use long-lasting mulches on your perennial beds. I would definitely get a soil test to check pH, Magnesium, and Nitrogen levels before adding more manure.

Thank you for the answers.

I use one by sixs between most rows to walk on (I had a couple of dozen from a deck but they are wearying out)

I have never had the soil tested.
The soil I took off of the roses was put in one half of the garden, and beyond producing extremely good crops, that part of the soil is the loser area of the garden yet in the roses if you put a trowel or spade in the ground you get clumps usually as big as the digger or bigger depending on how deep one goes.

It seems the other side where potatoes and corn are usually grown, rotated, just got real hard, compared to what I was used to, in one apprx. eight by six area.

I usually turn the soil with a standard sand shovel after a mild freeze and yes in the spring that makes tilling much easier but the one area is noticelby harder as I can tell by how the tiller slows down.

I guess I will have to have the soil tested and I will not till as heavily as I used to.

One thing I did not say was in the smaller of the two rose gardens to try to get loser soil (it is apprx. 12 x 3) I dug the part that was the worst down about one two feet,and replaced it with sandy loam from up north.

I did notice that after a certain depth, the soil became noticelby looser.
I had a pile about four feet around by two feet deep at the point.
It was late in the fall and I left the pile sit all next summer.
I planted pumpkin in the middle and they did very well.
Anyway this is one reason I have roto-tilled as deep as the tiller would go.
My new old used Simplicity sadly died but I would easily till very deep. If it got too deep I would simply reverse my way out.
Ny new new Ariens is not half the machine that Simplicity was.

I have chopped my corn stalks into apprx. one foot bits and turned that in by hand, I usually bury my potatoe vines,I pull weeds by hand and bury them.--(I have put seventy five percent of the garden into corn at times, including stalks that get 12 to 15 feet high. Recently I will chop about half and save the rest for a halloween corn shock.
Apprx eight years ago, I put coco beans five inches deep across an area about eight by six feet to control weeds so I think the organic level, at least in most of the garden is fairly decent, but that is just an opinion.)
Now in the area directly next to the worst spot, I took the above pile, moved it there and planted on top of the raised area.
I grew pumpkins and squash there, then the next spring I roughly spread out the raised area so the garden was mostly level again and the potatoes I grew there were easier to dig than they had been before I moved new soil there.

About five years ago, again to contrl weeds, I put straw between rows and over the area not planted about four inches deep.
I was gone for weeks at one point, and when I came back it looked like I had planted a wheat field.
I pulled the wheat from between the rows but simply turned the rest over with a shovel.
It probably would have been more helpful to do it when it was still green rather than wait till it was ripe. (I cut some for my sig. other to use in fall displays)
This area is now where the soil seems to be the worst.

I hate putting leaves and straw into the soil as my dad used to say it makes the garden into a clumpy slimey mess.
I found this out first hand several years ago when I took the leaves and straw off of the roses and simply roto-tilled them into the garden.
I don't know maybe that was what caused it but I figured by now it would have fixed itself.
In the rose garden I do walk and maybe that is the simple problem there.
I usually work in the garden barefoot, is that good or bad?
The one is big enough one has to walk in to work on the center roses.

I guess I will just have to have it tested, and work a trailer load of composted soil in the worst area.

One other item, although it has been over forty years, one major component of hardest part of the garden is genuine coal bits and coal dust, that covered the botton of the coal bin, that was dumped in the garden area when a cement floor was put in, from the old horse barn that was cut down into a garage.
Thanks for the answers.

These simple soil tests might be of some help.
1) Structure. From that soil sample put enough of the rest to make a 4 inch level in a clear 1 quart jar, with a tight fitting lid. Fill that jar with water and replace the lid, tightly. Shake the jar vigorously and then let it stand for 24 hours. Your soil will settle out according to soil particle size and weight. A good loam will have about 1-3/4 inch (about 45%) of sand on the bottom. about 1 inch (about 25%) of silt next, about 1 inch (25%) of clay above that, and about 1/4 inch (about 5%) of organic matter on the top.

2) Drainage. Dig a hole 1 foot square and 1 foot deep and fill that with water. After that water drains away refill the hole with more water and time how long it takes that to drain away. Anything less than 2 hours and your soil drains� too quickly and needs more organic matter to slow that drainage down. Anything over 6 hours and the soil drains too slowly and needs lots of organic matter to speed it up.

3) Tilth. Take a handful of your slightly damp soil and squeeze it tightly. When the pressure is released the soil should hold together in that clump, but when poked with a finger that clump should fall apart.

4) Smell. What does your soil smell like? A pleasant, rich earthy odor? Putrid, offensive, repugnant odor? The more organic matter in your soil the more active the soil bacteria will be and the nicer your soil will smell.

5) Life. How many earthworms per shovel full were there? 5 or more indicates a pretty healthy soil. Fewer than 5, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, indicates a soil that is not healthy.

Rather than burying or tilling in leaves and straw, I suggest that these be mulched up finely and then left on top or only very shallowly worked into the soil.

"I guess I will just have to have it tested, and work a trailer load of composted soil in the worst area.

You don't want composted soil. You want just plain compost or just organic matter. The soil you are adding is making the problem worse. If the soil you add is clay that is just adding more clay, if it is sand, it bad to add sand to clay.
You may even consider removing some of the soil to make room for more organic matter.

Look into the benefits of humate. Here is a site with info. There may be something in your area.

Here is a link that might be useful: Humate

Again thank you very much for the information.

I have two gardens fifty miles apart and the hard one I will get to next week.(The one I tilled today is the sandy loam one, plus twenty years of added orgainic matter, that has contributed soil to the hard one at times)
At this, soft garden, I can literally dig potatoes by hand.

If one digs below the black dirt of the hard garden,genuine yellow clay is under it averaging sixteen or so inches down.

I do have a fifty pound bag of green sand and a fifty pound bag of humic acid at the hard garden site.
How much should I add to an eight by eight area that is the worst spot?

I will do that jar test and see what pans out.
The dirt smells like dirt and will clump when squeezed, although I have never done this from the worst spot, and while not really fall apart, if you poke it, it will at least break in half.

I did the drainage test when I was worred the roses might be drowning and most of it passed but one area had me worried so that is the area where I replaced the top two feet of soil.

Now the earth worms thing, well, sometimes I have a lot of worms in a garden shovel full(I have a lot of night crawlers, enough that the lawn is often full of them at night. If you walk barefoot you can feel them moving underfoot sometimes) yet sometimes few to none come up in shovel full of dirt.

After the bad experience I now always composted the leaves and straw from the roses, or use them to cover potatoes that are either buried shallow or simply laid in a trench.

The garden is over fifty years old, and I will use all the help you have given me to get the worst spot back in shape.

Thank you very much.

Humate is added at a rate of 100 - 150 lbs. per acre. An acre is 43,560 sq. ft. You can do the math based on your garden size.

Contact the humate company and get their recomendations for the bad areas and your soil type.

Humates, humus, are nothing more then the undigested organic matter in soil. Add to your soil adequate amounts of organic matter and the humates will be there as the soil bacteria digest what they want and leave the rest. Coal is a humate, but it adds little of value to soils.
I think that the people that are selling humates or humus are selling people a "pig in a poke".

It does sound like the sandy loam you tilled in made the clay into concrete. If you add soil, it should be silty, not sandy.

I read pretty fast through this thread but I don't think all your organic additions have made the problem worse. You just have a really troublesome clay. I agree with the advice to till less, build compost piles on your garden (and/or use compostables as mulch around your plants), and never dig when it's wet.

Have you talked with your county ag extension? They might have some specific advice for your local soil.

Tox, is not silt very much like sand? If it does not behave like sand, it would also be hard to get silty soil. I don't think she needs silt, but just organic matter. It sounds like more of problem if you can't work the soil when it's wet how will you get all the organic matter dug in? You would be limited in the times you could dig it in. I dig it all the time, just here and there, since it is too much work to dig the whole garden in one day. I never dealt with clay, but it seems overwhelming impossible.

Silt is indeed like sand, only smaller. :-D Seriously though, silt will blend in with clay better without the risk of creating the cement-and-aggregate effect that sand does, because it is closer in particle size to the clay.

Loam, which is an ideal soil we'd all like to have, has sand, silt and clay and a good dose of organic matter.

Organic matter will help, but with clay, you have to keep adding it forever or the texture goes right back to its worst. If the texture of the mineral portion can be improved by changing the particle size distribution, the improved texture will be more lasting.

Yes, I have heard that there are down sides to adding OM to clay. That is good to know that silt won't behave like sand. I find that small particle sand which is what I have is worse then large particle sand. My soil has no clay. Because fine sand compacts more easily then big particle sand. So, I would not want to add any silt to my sand. If I was adding anything I like big particle sand. I do like horticultural sand that you could buy in little bags, but they don't sell it any more. If I could replace all my small particle sand with big particle by waving a magic wand, I would like it. The fine sand get hard as a rock just like clay. You can knock on it like wood. But, if you have to dig it up, it is much easier then clay to dig. I starting out with all weeds and fine sand. The ground was so hard weeding was impossible until I added OM. My hands would swell up with pain if I tried to weed it.

Organic matter is the one part of your soil that you will need to add all the time. It does not make any difference whether you have a clay soil, a sandy soil, or loam, the Soil Food Web will digest the organic matter and convert that into the nutrients your plants will need to grow. Hence you will need to add organic matter to your soil forever. Ma Nature does that without your help every year which is why when you walk in the woods there is always leaf litter on the ground, under foot. When our ancestors first arrived here they found soil well endowed with organic matter. Then they mined those soils and did nothing to replace the organic matter and the fantastic yields decreased. Some understood about OM and added some every year, others did not and had to move someplace else, just as the nomadic people have done for eons.

No matter what soil type you have, sand, silt, or clay, adding sufficient quantities of organic matter is the only thing you can do that will make that soil into a good, healthy soil that will grow strong and healthy plants.

tropical_thought
You can buy sand blasting sand at your local Lowes, Homedepot,etc. It is graded by coarseness. Vermiculite will also work and is much lighter. If you can get it expanded shale is very good.

Here is a link that might be useful: Expanded shale

Agreed on the value of regular organic matter additions. I didn't mean to suggest stopping that, and RpR said he has added a lot over time and is about to put trailer loads of sheep manure in, so no worries there.

"No matter what soil type you have, sand, silt, or clay, adding sufficient quantities of organic matter is the only thing you can do that will make that soil into a good, healthy soil that will grow strong and healthy plants."

Kimmsr, I would feel better when reading your posts if they were not so dogmatic.

How about, "Adding sufficient organic matter is the most important thing you can do that will make that soil into a good, healthy soil that will grow strong and healthy plants."

But, Wanye I feel Kimmsr is right about that. Unless you are doing soil less growing ie hydroponics. It is the only thing that will make the plants healthy in soil. Or course there are plants that will do ok like CA natives in a native soil without organic matter, but the majority of things people want in a garden ie roses will need OM.

tropical, Surely minerals that are not sufficient in most composts count too. And for myself, I have found that texture amendments help quickly to get that loose soil when you have hard clay initially.

How much compost would I need to amend all this....

;-)

Lloyd

Dogmatism is a self-perpetuating condition, in that it is difficult to convince someone who believes they are always right that they are wrong about that.

And I know I'm right about that. :-D

Jeff Gillman, professor of horticulture at the University of Minnesota, writes in his latest book that the single most important thing any gardener can do is add organic matter to their soil. A large number of other people, starting with Sir Albert Howard and ranging through Lee Reich (dual phDs in soil science and horticulture) have said the same thing.

I agree with that kimmsr. Of course, I don't stop there, but like to have good texture also. OM helps in any soil. I also like to know that ny soil has cobalt, vanadium, iodine, and a host of micro minerals.

Here is a link that might be useful: Trace minerals

I don't think you'll get any arguments from us compost wackos on that point! It may be the most important, but it is not the *only* thing. That was the one and only point.

People would like to add more organic matter, but it takes effort to collect enough. Life and house work have enough daily tasks to do, so most people just won't get into composting all that much. You have to really love composting like I do to be a compost wacko.

Would it be a good idea to roto-till a couple-three-four bales of peat moss into the hard area?

I am kind of starting to think that replacing my fifty plus years old genuine Roto-Tiller tiller with a newer model was a bad idea.
The old one took hours longer to use but it left bigger chunks in the garden.
I still have it but use it in my other soft garden.

In my experience, mixing 4 or 5 inches deep of peat moss into hard black clayey soil will give a really nice loose soil.

You would think that with all the info out there about what is required to get a decent garden up, how when we look out our window there is grass, weeds, flowers, and huge trees everywhere we look with no help except for mother nature....

Peat moss is organic matter and it can be used by those that do not have access to other, renewable, types of organic matter. Peat moss costs money while tree leaves are free, if you live where deciduous trees abound. People that live in, say, Arizona probably need to use peat moss while people that live in New Hampshire should not need to.
Most people toss out enough organic matter every year to provide adequate amounts to maintain their soil.

Lots of organic matter is great and I support that. Some stiff and heavy areas can be helped in one hour with some peat moss...I have been there.

With the cold weather we have had I finally got the hard garden till last week.
I was short on time with having to uncover the roses so I did not add anything to the soil just tilled it and planted what I could before sundown, actually till it got too dark to see.

We had, had light rain so the top eigth inch was wet, but under it at time I had dust.
It tilled a little easier than I though but maybe because I was not struggling through wet soil.
In the expected hard spot it wanted to run-away on me acouple of times , but even that broke-up a little easie than the year before.
Although it was really too dry for good planting it was near ideal condtions working in the garden not having to worry about clumps of soil sticking to the tools and shoes.

The worst area is still unplanted so I will amend that before I plant there.

One thing I noticed is that the garden soil is now more of a dark, dark brown when not wet; whereas the rose soil is just plain black, or charcoal grey when it is not wet.

Roaes, looked good even though under their blanket it was probably too warm and at least the top cover should have been removed two-weeks ago.
I lost, or think I lost, I mean cannot find, not died, a rose but I will not know for sure untill a rose bud pops up out of nowhere.
I am done with burying the roses. In that black-gumbo it is just plain misery to dig them up in the spring.

In the past five years, I have lost, died, so many roses that the gaps between them is large enough I may dig out the dirt between them. Put it in the vegetable garden and take the best soil from the vegetable garden and put it between the roses.
I do not know if it will help, but it cannot hurt.

We had a couple of inches yesterday, so everything in the ground should be well off now.

Did you try posting on the roses forum?

About hard soil, the easy way to deal with this, make some homemade compost. If you don't have enough add bagged browns. Then mulch the area with the homemade compost. Water well, wait about two weeks. Then turn the top layer of soil, but not too deeply. I just turn it by hand. Rototillers kill the earthworms. Water a second time. Then re mulch again with homemade compost or bagged browns. Repeat the process again as many times as you can or want. Each time you will notice the soil is easier to turn. But rototilling in sand is not going to help, it will only make things worse. I don't think rototilling helps at all. The soil just goes hard again. Only if you add more OM is it going to get softer. Yes, turning and rototilling creates air space in the soil, but it will only compact again. When your soil is in good shape you can re plant the roses. It is better to do the soil prep first before planting. Once roses are planted you can't really improve the soil very much under them. You can only improve the top layer slightly.

I move plants around a lot and I been through many roses over the years. It is a process. I think your roses could have bad drainage, but there could be something else wrong like a disease or a virus. That is why you can post photos to the rose forum and they may be able to come up with some more ideas.

Here is a link that might be useful: mulched with homemade compost