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Soil, Compost & Mulch

Re-starting half-prepared beds (lots of clay & compost)

14 years ago

Hi all,

As a result of running off on vacation before putting my plants in, I figure I have a few days to really do up my beds right.

What I did was to rototill what had been hard clay soil with grass (some rhyzomal) and weeds covering it, and adding in about 1/6th as much compost (because last year when I did lasagna gardening, I used straight compost and that did not work well for the plants).

So now I have that, and I was thinking, maybe before I put my plants in I should do whatever more I can do to improve it. For example, bringing in some more compost (I can get massive amounts of this stuff).

And/or trying to get something like old hay or straw **in addition to** the compost? And would the old hay or straw clutter up my rototiller the way the grass does :( ?

I also had this idea which seemed like might be totally crazy, which would be to move all the tilled dirt to one side, and then till in the emptied area again so the tilled part would be deeper (this is serious clay here, which is why I was thinking of doing that).

I guess if I add in enough compost, I wouldn't have to return so much of the original soil back, right? Because if there is some extra, I could put it in the areas which become puddles when it rains :)

And is there anything else I could do to improve it very quickly?

Thanks for any advice :D

Comments (4)

the_virginian
14 years ago
I recommend never removing any of the native soil, only adding amendments to it and mounding it in the bed or leveling it out if needed. Clay is great soil if it is amended well with organic matter as you are doing. Straw may help with tilth if roto tilled in too, but probably isn't really needed.
Kimmsr
14 years ago
The straw or hay should be used as a mulch.
Water puddles on soils that are not draining, there is a problem there that needs curing, not more clay.
Generally adding compost to soils 6 inches down is not very fruitfull since compost is aerobic and soils below about 6 inches are anaerobic.
Work on getting the top 6 inches in good shape and let the Soil Food Web will take care of everything else.
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luckygal
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I'm pretty much averse to extra work so wouldn't "double dig" but would add as much organic matter as possible. Use the hay and straw as mulch - the hay might have weed seeds so you could put straw on top of it. I've also found that if you feed the worms so they propagate they will do some of the work for you. We were amazed when DH made a new garden bed that there were lots of holes deep in the heavy clay. I wonder if they winter there or go deep in the heat of summer. Not sure but I know they are worthwhile encouraging.
philothea
Original Author
14 years ago
Oh, this is great :) I don't have to do very much! This may be the first time this has happened to me while gardening.... Thanks very much!

As to the puddling, we have little mini-ditches all around to help with drainage, but there is definitely the problem of simply being too low in places, like the horse walks and where they did work on the pipes underground.

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