OOps. I should probably add... this red, hard dirt I'm describing... it's on a southern facing slope on my front yard. I can't get grass (or anything) to grow on it... seed just runs down the hill when any water hits it.
I'm at a high altitude... 8,400 ft; so the sun is very potent up here. By mid-summer... the grass is fried. Watering doesn't help, because the water won't penetrate it. Then in late summers, we get these afternoon downpours... that wash everything down the hill. Eventually, I intend to add some hardscaping to this area... but for now... I just need to get something established here so I can hopefully prevent any further erosion.

I just bought this place...but it seems that all my 'topsoil' was washed into the street, and down the storm drains long before I got here. How do I get soil to stay put in this area?

Welcome to Colorado.

I can't really analyze your clay but it sounds like you need to build up your soil. I think I'd try using Interbay Mulch method or something similiar.

Straw is usually fairly easy and affordable to get in Colorado. So that would be a good start at building up the soil.

Thanks so much for the reply. I love it here, but everything is so different compared to what I'm used to. My 'soil' especially... since it's not uniform throughout my property.

Would wood chippings work? A guy down the street from me sells firewood, and he has enormous piles of confer shavings sitting there doing nothing. I hesitate to use too much straw in my front yard... mostly I'm afraid it will blow away or slide down the slope. It's not a steep slope... but just enough to keep things from staying put.

I do have some monstrous night crawlers... so it can't be all bad. They come up to the surface on warm summer nights after a hard rain by the swarms... but I honestly don't know how they can travel through that stuff. When it's dry, that south slope get's hard as a rock.

I'll check out that Interbay Mulch method you mentioned...

Thanks again for the reply. I really appreciate it. I have spring fever, and just cant wait to get started on all this... but it's snowing like crazy up here. I'm so tired of winter...

Leslie

Clay is a somewhat generic term for a lot of different soils. The clay I've got is yellow. When you have clay, it can be difficult to get water to soak in, but once it does get in, it stays there for a long time. Lots of organic matter can help loosen it up.

The wood chips can help, but don't till them in unless you compost them thoroughly first. If you till them in, they'll use up nitrogen and make it unavailable to the plants. If you just put them on top of the soil, they'll still help the soil, but they won't tie up the nitrogen.

Oh boy! I could have some serious fun with this, even though my neighbors are probably going to freak out...

I'm sitting here reading about the IMB method, and have a couple more questions now...

1. Am I going to have problems with Black Bear if I try this? If so... can I maybe avoid this by doing smaller sections at a time?

2. This is on a southern slope, no shade, and the sun is ultra potent at this altitude...even when the air temp stay cooler. Will burlap dry out too quickly? I'm asking because we occasionally have water restrictions... and I'm not set up to harvest rainwater. (yet)

3. I understand that air circulation is important, but if I used a material that was slightly darker than, and had slightly less ventilation than burlap...would that extra heat help speed the process and prevent excessive moisture evaporation... or create a stinky biological hazard?

If only I had started thinking on this last fall... I could have been building that soil up all winter. (I hate being such a darn newbie.)

I'm getting strangely excited about this...

4. Can I start this right now... or must I wait for spring to happen? (Who knows how long that will be)

5. Lastly... I read that pine needles are considered "brown materials. Why is that... since technically they are green. (Or do they mean old partially decomposed pine needles... if so... is there any reason you couldn't use fresh green ones?) Brown or green, it seems they boost the acidity of the final product? Hmmm... I'm wondering how fast I can make room for those new blueberry plants...

Huge thanks for replying to me, because I've been stumped on this since I broke that shovel... and cant afford a fancy earth auger. Still reading on... but thanks MUCH for cluing me in here! I finally feel like I'm on the right track now...

Leslie in CO

I don't know about the bears.

I think the purpose of the burlap is to help keep the moisture in. As far as harvesting rainwater goes, you should probably check to see whether it's allowed. There are some odd rules regarding water in the west and I've read that collecting rainwater may not be legal in Colorado (I've also read that that's a misinterpretation, though, and I don't know which is true). It boils down to water rights, which are pretty strictly regulated out here.

I think you want the air circulation.

I would probably start it now.

Pine needles that died on the branch and dropped would be browns and those that are green would be greens. Contrary to popular belief, neither is going to give you acidic conditions. Most of the intermountain west has alkaline soil, so if you want blueberries, you're probably going to need to grow them in a pot or a planter.

By definition clay is a particle size not a type of soil. Most people confuse the two.

That is true that you're not supposed to collect rainwater in Colorado, such a silly law. That said for the most part nobody is checking. There was a legal case awhile back that there were homeowners somewhere on the west slope that were using rainwater for their vegetable garden and they were forced to stop. I believe the law reads something like "leave rainwater where it falls".

I'm shocked. They WANT the rain water to go to the storm drains?

If the rain lands on my roof... shouldn't I be able give some to my plants?

This is another good example of 'strangely unfamiliar adjustments' I'm trying to cope with. Back home... they encourage home owners to keep water out of the drains. Part of the reason Fargo is surrounded by 5 million sandbags right now, is because too much water ends up there... it overflows and backs up their entire sewer systems.

I thought I was doing a GOOD thing by trying to use water more efficiently... with the drought and all. Another thing for me to research I guess...

Thanks for the head's up on that.. but I really am shocked over that one.

Leslie

"I'm shocked. They WANT the rain water to go to the storm drains? "

Yes.

"If the rain lands on my roof... shouldn't I be able give some to my plants?"

No.

It doesn't belong to you. It belongs to somebody downstream from you.

I've done some reading on the water rights laws and if you try to get your arms wrapped around things, some of the odd things are really remnants of things that were codified when they were trying to ensure there was enough water for the cattle and sheep.

Way back when, if a rancher had a stream and built a dam, he could build up a big reservoir of water and make sure he always had enough water for his cattle. But the people who lived downstream would suddenly find that the stream had dried up and they couldn't get water for their sheep (or themselves). Don't you remember all those old westerns where the mean cattle baron was trying to starve out the hard working settlers and/or sheep farmers in the valley? And then somebody (who used to be a hired killer or something) ends up saving the day for the sheep farmers? Shane, Trinity, Angel and the Badman are examples.

So there are all kinds of agreements in place as to who owns water in various places, how much they can dam, how much they can use in a year, how much they can sell to somebody else, and so forth. Technically, I think the way the laws are written, they don't say who owns the water, but who owns the rights to the water.

In most cases, unless you own the rights to do so, you can't stop water from flowing to the people downstream from you, who own the right to use it (or part of it) but also probably don't own the rights to stop its flow (so the sheep farmer in the valley can keep his sheep alive).

I think there is also language in some of the laws that basically gives precedence to agriculture over cities and towns (probably because it was so important at the time to keep the ranch animals alive). And there's often language giving precedence to the oldest rights (so ranches that have been in the same family for generations ahve more rights that people who have recently acquired rights.

There are also some odd laws WRT gray water. In some parts of the country, there are laws against using gray water for plants because the thinking is that there could be hygiene issues. In the west, the laws are in place because you don't buy the water, you buy the right to use the water once. The key is that you buy the right to use it once. After you've used it, it belongs to somebody else. So you can put a bucket in the shower to catch the water while it's warming up (since you haven't used that water yet) but once you step in, you're not supposed to catch the water because you've used it to shower.

I think there are a lot of problems with the way the water rights are doled out. One of the biggest is that when they decided how much water each state should be given, they did it in a period of historically high precipitation. Some people say that they made it worse by overestimating how much water was there. The end result is that there is a lot more water "owned" than there is actual water.

I'm convinced that it's going to get much worse in the years ahead. I've been replacing my lawn grass with native grasses that use much less water than traditional grasses. I should be able to keep my lawn green without watering until late June or early July and only watering 1-2 times a month. In contrast, most of my neighbors water daily (to make a better comparison, I've been watering once a week except in the hottest part of the summer, when I water about once every 5 days).

I think I'd get as much organic matter into that clay as possible. I also live where clay is the norm and initially I added sawdust, manure, peat moss, and synthetic fertilizer to my garden before I went organic. The important thing is to get some organic material mixed with that clay. Straw, old hay, sawdust, leaves, basically any organic material that will decompose over time. There are other amendments you can add to correct deficiencies. If you use sawdust you will need to add nitrogen but many seed meals work well for that. Various teas and indigenous microorganisms will also improve the soil. See my thread titled "BIM, Bug juice, Biochar, compost, weeds..." - there are some very knowledgeable people here who have good advice on building soil.

You might have to terrace that hill to prevent run-off. Got any rocks there? When we lived on the side of a mountain my DH made rock walls to terrace our back yard.

Leslie,
You can get wood chip mulch (free) in the Springs too. Seems like there may be a Slash/Mulch program in Divide. I don't know if there's one in WP. Maybe check Teller Cty's website or try a search. Slash/Mulch is summer only but I know someone who was getting mulch near Memorial Park last month.

If you do have to purchase straw, I know in the fall there were places to selling it for $8/bale but I have seen it for about half that since then. You may also be able to get spoiled hay (free) from someplace up there with a bunch of horses.

Still in shock about the rain water.. deal. There is also an old ND law on the books which says every man released from prison there will receive a saddle and a horse. (serious... it's weird)

I'm glad the water issue came up though... I would never have imagined...

Do I have any rocks here? You wouldn't believe how many. I am a major rockhound... I brought probably a ton of them with me when I moved here.... because I couldn't part with them. My friends thought I was nuts... I am passionate about rocks, and I'm getting to be the same way about plants. I have them all over the place. I pick them up all over the place.

As far as adding terrace... I have that listed as part of next years agenda, along with some hard scape. I need to to tackle this in stages... otherwise I simply can't afford all the materials all at once.

I really like the ideas I'm getting here... thanks for all these great replies. It's really juiced up my creative process... much more than I expected. I need to sleep on all this now... but I have a tenative agenda in the works for tomorrow already...

You have no idea how much I appreciate all this feed back. Thanks a ton... I'll be back with more questions... probably tomorrow. I hope they fix their search engine soon... I can't find anything on here without it.

Leslie in CO

I don't know if the water harvesting is an outdated law or not, but I know I wouldn't follow it. I'm from the west, we'd get a huge snow pack and every year my Uncle would talk about how we're in a 10 year drought, I always thought he was off his rocker, but he explained how all of our water was owned by people downstream, AZ and CA have water rights to snow falling in the Rockies. A mule has more sense than politicians and writers of law.

By definition clay is a particle size not a type of soil. Most people confuse the two.

Well, it's also by definition a soil textural class. So if a soil is a clay soil, it's going to have 40% or more clay particles.

What type of soil you have is determined by the soil particles you have and that would be Clay, Silt, or Sand, or the combination of those that you have. Clay soil particles are small in size and very uniform and they stick together like glue. Silt soil particles are a bit larger and less unifrom than Clay but still tend to stick together, although not quite as tightly as Clay. Sand soil particles are large (almost large enough to see individual particles without a microscope) and although very uniform in size too big the fit tightly together so sandy soils tend to drain really well.
The ideal soil is loam, which can be further classified as Clay Loam, Sandy Loam, or Silty loam, it just depends on how much of which is there. The ideal loam would have 45 percent Sand, 25 percent Silt, 25 percent Clay, and about 5 percent organic matter. Few of us have that so we need to add to our soil organic matter which in Clay, and Silty, soils will seperate the soil particles so moisture and nutrients will flow easier and plant roots can move out and about easier. In Sandy soils the organic matter will fill in the pore spaces and help hold both moisture and nutrients which will make them available to the plant roots.
So to improve drainage in Clay and Silty soils you need to add organic matter, which will open up the spaces between the soil particles and allow excess water to flow through while also making the moisture, and nutrients, that the clay soil particles tend to hang onto more available to the plants.

Our clay is black. I have raised beds because I wouldn't live long enough or have enough money to turn this stuff into workable soil.

While it does take a lot of organic matter to fix a bad soil, it can be done at little cost if all the waste vegetative material is recycled. Once the optimum level of OM in soil is reached maintaining it is not that difficult. Far to omany people seem to think that they must spend money or what goes into their soil is not good. Free stuff just will not work for these people even though that is the best, and most available, source of organic matter.