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Break up clay with Paver's sand versus Peat Moss

strawchicago z5
11 years ago

12 years ago we tackled the hardened clay soil. I researched and found info. that stated: 1) COARSE BUILDER'S SAND with small pebbles is best to break up clay 2) Compost works, but for a short time, since it decays 3) do not use peat moss, since it makes clay water-logged. Peat moss is acidic at pH of 4.5.

I used Coarse-builder's-sand, or Paver's sand with great results on all my 26 trees. Some of them are taller than my 2-story house, esp. the white pine with the most paver's sand.

There's this erroneous post on-line about don't use sand for clay, since sand mixed with clay is used to make pottery. I checked on pottery and found that only ONE Native American tribe used a tiny bit of sand mixed with clay for their pottery, and the rest of the world don't. There's the FIRING process in pottery, where clay is heated at very high temperature for several hours before it hardened. Some "experts" took this and applied to the garden, telling folks NOT to break up clay with sand.

They also confused Play-sand versus Coarse Builder's sand. Play sand is dusty fine, Coarse Builder's Sand (or Paver's sand) has pebbles and crushed rocks mixed in. I put Paver's sand along garden border, then put bricks on top. It's not high enough, so I kept adding dirt, then more sand. A decade later, I expand my border and found that the sand and dirt mixture is still fluffy, the sand hasn't been compacted by the bricks.

Unfortunately I believed in the "bad-sand-tale" and used peat moss instead of paver's sand to break up clay. We used rototiller to mix peatmoss and alfalfa meal into clay. It was nice and fluffy. 8 months later I moved William Shakespeare rose to more sun. The peatmoss/alfalfa/clay mixture had hardened into big clumps. His root is small like a band-size. The roots could not expand in such gluey clump. He's all wilted after being uprooted.

In contrast, when I took band-size Lynnie rose out of the pot after 2 months, her roots are big. It's the loose potting soil with perlite and composted pine barks that crumbled from the move, and NOT the roots. Lynnie is perky after the move to the ground. In rooting roses' cuttings, people report best results with supersoil and perlite mix, or with sand.

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