Does doing this benefit my compost?

15 years ago

Over the last several years I have built raised beds using compost. However, from time to time, I start a new bed or double-dig an old one and bring up the original heavy clay soil.

For the last six months, I have filled a 5 gallon bucket with a 1/3 of clay soil and then the rest with rain water then let it sit for a day. This breaks the clay down 90 percent and I pour the mixture over my compost pile when it needs water. My thought is it adds trace minerals and is a good way to introduce the benefits of clay soil to the compost. Before I came up with this method, I would move all the clay to a pile near the compost and then scrape a 1/2" off the top for adding to screened compost before adding back to the gardens.

What are your thoughts? Any pluses? Any Minuses? Depending on the responses, I am thinking of doing the same thing to coffee grounds I have been getting from Starbucks as opposed to the current method of adding 1" layer on top of the current pile.

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Comments (6)

medontdo
15 years ago
i have been reading the site for a while and the one thing i read over and over is that clay soil is rich in nutrients. so i think thats a great idea! IMO but i'm a newbie LOL i do know i have clay and for some reason when i dig i see worms all the time. so there must be something to the nutrient thing. ??? i like your idea :')) Medo
Kimmsr
15 years ago
Clay soil particles are very small, uniform, bits of stone and rock that slide together so tightly that nothing can flow through that soil, hence why many people think clay soils are so tough to work with. Does making a slurry of that soil and pouring it over compost do much of anything? Maybe, maybe not, depending on just where that clay soil came from. If it is the surface, the top 6 inches of soil that may have some benefit. If it is the subsoil it is unlikely there would be much, if any benefit from doing that since this would be an anaerobic soil with few nutrients locked in.
Is this a lot of unnecessary work? Absolutely.
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luckygal
15 years ago
I'm by no means an expert on soil or compost but one thing we noticed when DH dug a new flower bed last year was that there were lots of worms and worm tunnels in the heavy clay base. The new bed was made in an area that had been lawn and had only about 6" of decent soil above. Now there are a lot of better places the worms could have been in our garden with deeper good soil but they chose to tunnel and perhaps hibernate in the clay. Not sure why that is but I think they may do the work for me if I ignore the clay base. I just add the compost on top every year. I think rainwater will leach the nutrients down into the clay base and perhaps make it a better environment for the worms.

So perhaps you could loosen that clay in place, add compost to feed the worms and your worm families will mix it up and improve it over time.
Belgianpup
15 years ago
The tiny particles of clay hold soil nutrients. Good clay-loam soil will out-produce good sandy loam, because it holds onto the nutrients longer. I certainly wouldn't discard all the clay. You might try returning 25% of the clay back to the bed with the compost, and take note of what it looks like a year later. Better? Worse? Pretty good?

I have sandy soil, and am adding clay to it as I gradually improve the soil. The clay helps retain both moisture and nutrients.

Sue
led_zep_rules
15 years ago
I also have heavy clay soil and make a lot of raised beds using the lasagna method. If I have extra clay soil from someplace, I just spread it around on top of the raised beds, trying to break up the big clumps a bit. It is good to have some actual soil in your raised beds and not just compost, because of the diverse minerals in it.

Seems like a lot of work to put the clay soil in buckets and put it into the compost and then spread that compost around later. I do throw a bit of clay soil into the compost but no need to soak it first. I would worry about the brick effect - wet clay mucked about with too much gets hard.

Marcia
Kimmsr
15 years ago
The Clay soil particles themselves do not hold anything, but the interaction of those clay soil particles does set things up so moisture and nutrients are locked in and unavailable to the plants that are trying to grow in clay. Organic matter seperates those clay particles so the moisture and nutrients can be made available to the plants easier. Soil scientists think the clay soil particles electric charge may be the reason why the moisture and nutrients are held onto so tightly.

Does doing this benefit my compost?

Comments (6)

medontdo

Kimmsr

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