How small is small? Could you build a lasagna bed?

We added a room to our 200-year-old cabin. This required digging into the underlying clay. I sat plants in a small shallow hole and piled compost from a community compost facility about 8 inches deep and walked away. IÂve never done anything to this area except add organic matter from this compost facility and you canÂt jump over the plants. By the way IÂve never amended any of the area in these photos or used any form of fertilizer.

I would add organic matter to the surface as mulch and forget it.

The H Blue Angel is about 3 ft tall and 6-8 ft wide.

We added a room to our 200-year-old cabin. This required digging into the underlying clay. I sat plants in a small shallow hole and piled compost from a community compost facility about 8 inches deep and walked away. IÂve never done anything to this area except add organic matter from this compost facility and you canÂt jump over the plants. By the way IÂve never amended any of the area in these photos or used any form of fertilizer.

I would add organic matter to the surface as mulch and walk away.

The H Blue Angel is about 3 ft tall and 6-8 ft wide.
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Wow- beautiful house, and a great job.

This is a created rock outcrop and a shot of the upper waterfall. The second is a created bog that grows hosta, astilbe, pulmonria, daylilies like weeds. It is fed by by shower water.

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This is the sort of feel I'd like to get to in my yard. The hostas and shade-loving plants are key. I planted a mess from seed (doing it the hard way), and I was psyched to finally have spears coming up this week for the ones I put in the ground last summer.

Way too much to do. I'm always battling what the last owners and the original developers did ya know?

Really good stuff.

My best advice is to till peat moss into heavy clay soil.

You will need more in the first year but after that you don't need to add nearly as much. Also remember to keep adding compost and/or manure every year. Working in a big batch of leaves is great too.

If it is a big enough plot to plow and disc, doesn't sound like a lasagna bed is practical. And I surely wouldn't want to be buying enough bags of peat moss for a small field. I have a heavy clay soil, too, but don't need to garden over such a large area, so I have lots of raised lasagna beds. I avoid buying products for organic gardening as much as possibly, although I do have organic fruit tree spray and a few things like that. Not sure why your manure was dehydrated, easier to spread? But I would suggest this fall you spread a lot more manure, and leaves in quantity if you can.

Do you have a nearby town where you can get A LOT of bags of leaves in the fall? I still have a stockpile from the dozens I snagged last fall. Or just work on parts of it as you can, throw lots of compost on, get large quantities of coffee grounds from a Starbucks, whatever you can get your hands on. The more organic material, the nicer it will get. I don't dig or plow my stuff in, I leave it on the top. Don't know if that helps or not, but supposedly it has advantages.

Good luck to you!
Marcia

Adding sand can permanently help clay soil, but only if you're willing to add a lot. I've read that you need to add as much as 45% sand. Adding too little can actually make things worse. Only add sand if you're prepared to add enough to help. If you do add sand, make sure it's coarse sand.

Adding organic matter (OM) is temporary, because it breaks down. But it never makes things worse. Adding a little OM makes things a little better. Adding a lot of OM makes things a lot better. The advantage is that it can't make it worse. The disadvantage is that you need to do it every year.

Many tree trimming services have to pay to dump the shredded limbs that they have. They're usually happy to deliver truckloads for free, since it saves them dump fees (this is a big part of why Starbucks wants to give away as many grounds as possible). The "drawback" to getting the shredded limbs is that you usually have to be prepared to take a full truckload. If I were to do that, I'd have a tough time using it all--I could spread it on my lawn, but it would take a long time, because I'd be doing it manually. In your case, you could just pile it on top of your plot.

You probably don't want to till the shredded trees into the soil, because that can cause the wood to "rob" nitrogen from the soil to decompose. If you pile it on top, it'll use nitrogen from the air instead, but will still help loosen the soil.

If you've got access to a lot of manure, you could use the manure and the shredded trees to do lasagna gardening. Or, it you want to till, since the manure is fairly high N, you could till the manure and tree shredding together, and the manure would supply the N for the decomposition. Many people prefer a no till approach to organic hardening, though.

I did this 9 years ago. I added peat(initally), lime, and manure in year 1, then added about a ton of compost every successive year. The great thing about clay soil is that it is nutrient rich and much superior to sandy soil, so when you get it improved you will be well pleased.

You need to get around 6 to 8 percent humus in your soil to see a noticeable difference. What is the humus level in your soil now?

Hi everyone,

Great responses and so many ideas! I have to say, I am not sure how to check the hummus level or exactly what lasagna gardening is. Any references? Thanks!