MOVE....J/K!
Good luck, I just fill with water, wait most of the day, dig down 6 inches, fill with water and repeat :(

Hmmm - silt? Isn't that super-fine soil? Seems like you'd want larger stuff to improve drainage?

Sand is just going to make matters worse. Core aerate your lawn and then top dress with 1/4" compost. This will help break down the clay . Or for quicker results some people use a soil conditioner like nitron a-35.

I am going to give you a nice detailed answer to this in a few hours. I will say that it does not involve adding any sand. I have to get some stuff done this afternoon and then I will get back to this.

Just giving you a heads up--nothing more.

Be afraid, be very afraid!!!

>grin

hi adp_abq,

why will adding sand make it worse?

Wet clay + sand is essentially a cheap way to make concrete. The clay just holds the sand together. Try it with a small batch and see what happens.

Patrick Alexander

magnetogram:

paalexan answered it well.

Sounds similar to my lawn. My lawn looks nice but 6 inch deep its crusted clay, hard to dig through it. (I cant do those burying someone in backyard jokes anymore). Nursery planted a Brazilian pepper tree in my lawn, they couldnt dig thru the hard clay. They used an electric jack hammer, took them like 20-25min. The tree is growing ok, I used to wonder if the roots will be able to penetrate the hard clay.
My neighbourhood is on the mountainside, and everyone has trees in their yard, so iam assuming the roots penetrate through the hard clay.

This is now my 4th time trying to post this. Each time it has changed a bit, but I am going to the heart of the matter first.

A quick note though--soil components are usually measured by particle size. The smallest is clay, followed by silt, then sand and finally gravel rocks etc. Soil is considered "clayey" when it has 30% or more clay by volume.

As a single type of soil, silt is considered the best overall, but each type has its advantages and disadvantages. For example, clay can hold the most nutrients and retain the most water, but it also is the worst in draining and providing air for the roots. Sand is great for drainage and air, but is a poor medium in retaining water and nutrients. Silt is somewhere in the middle on all 4 of these categories, but not the best or worst in any one category. An ideal soil would combine the properties of all of these soils.

So what to do in your situation? With plumeria, your biggest concern is rot, so you need to improve the drainage. Adding sand is an option--however, you have to add lots of sand--we are talking 40% by volume over a wide area. Your best solution though is twofold. First, widen out the area a bit and mix the native soil with lots of compost--50% by volume is ideal with clay and you will be surprised how quickly the soil will "eat" the compost (throw in some sulfur also). And secondly, raise the base of the plumeria a bit. What I mean is don't plant it at the same level as the lawn, but raise it a few inches. This will allow the area to drain a little better with the help of gravity. One caveat here--I would suggest you mulch the area with a organic mulch. My suggestion would be the larger grade of bark/wood chips. It will prevent the ground from crusting over and the large size of the chips will prevent them from matting down and contributing to the problem. As you mentioned before, you do have earthworms. These guys will be probably congregate in that area also further improving the drainage, but they have to find and "settle" in the area first.

As for the rest of your lawn, someone had suggested you core aerate and fill in the areas with compost. I would suggest doing this twice a year: once in the fall and once around March. Calling a golf course and talking with the groundskeeper and asking him/her about their aerating schedule is also a pretty good idea. These guys have degrees in turf management get paid to do these things (I golf regularly so when I get a chance to talk to them, I try to). You can also top-dress with sand, but you have to keep doing that year after year to change the properties of your soil. Everything will try to revert to its original state unless you stay on top of it each year. Compost will suffice and it will improve the tilth of soilit just takes a little time.

Sorry for the late response--there are some other steps that can be done and maybe one day I will try to post a more comprehensive guide to improving the soil here in Arizona, but this should suffice in your situation.

GL and HTH

thanks for the help.

i ended up using loamy soil from the front yard. i mixed in some soil conditioner and pumice. this was a quick fix because i needed to get the plumeria in the ground right away. it's doing okay. the soil temp is around 80 degrees. that's seems somewhat warm. however, i did plant it right at the edge of the sidewalk for winter warmth.

detrick

One note on water-holding capacities of sand... In southern New Mexico, cottonwoods are water-limited in their distribution. At White Sands National Monument, you can find cottonwoods growing on pure sand. You can't find any of them growing on adjacent clay. So I don't think the situation is nearly as simple as "clay holds water, sand doesn't". In some cases, at least, sand does a much better job of maintaining available water for plants than clay does.

Patrick Alexander

I wouldn't put a Plumeria in the lawn, because it will get too much water there. You should water a plumeria the way you water a citrus. Less frequent deep waterings.

Beth--if that is an issue, then you aren't watering your lawn correctly. In the summer, my lawn was watered 2-3 times every 2 weeks for 40 minutes (depended on the temperature). Infrequent deep waterings is something that should for your lawn also. It is not only for trees and shrubs.

My 2 cents here.

beth,

during the growing season i water them 2-3 times a week. they might get water almost every day when it really gets hot. i have found that they have no problem with frequent watering. the problem comes from soil that doesn't drain well. all things considered, i think it's harder to overwater them when they are planted in the ground. the soil temps need to be considered, too. i would say that plumeria don't like cold, wet feet. right now the ground tip around my lawn plumeria is 80 degrees.

detrick

here's that plumeria that i planted in the ground last week.

{{gwi:423108}}

LOL - looks like AZDrat planted that one - it looks like a flag at the golf course, with leaves instead of cloth!

But, as always, your plumeria look great, D. Is that reddish orange bloom in the back a plumie? The leaves look too big to be a rose....

hey pc - those are cannas. the white blooms are plumeria.

AZDesertRat is correct. Clays soils do hold water better than sandy soils, it is that simple. The reason you find cottonwood trees growing at White Sands in sand and not clay is because cottonwoods prefer loamy or sandy soils. . . not because that magic sand somehow defies physics and holds water better than clay. Many trees cannot handle damp roots.

If you add coarse sand to clay, you will improve the soil texture, you will not make concrete. Concrete requries cement. I find a mixture of coarse sand and organic matter (compost) works the best. If you have to add only one thing to clay though, add lots of compost.

gglines,

thanks for clearing up the sand/clay issue. i thought it was just a matter of increasing the particle size.

detrick

In other words gglines, it's the compost (solely) that's the factor in improving the soil (texture or otherwise)... not the sand.

No, increasing the particle size by adding coarse sand helps tremendously and is essentially permanent. You're trying to create space in the soil where fungi can grow and water and air can penetrate. Organic matter gets used up, it's eaten by the soil bacteria and worms which convert it to substances that plants use. You have to keep replacing it. Do both, but obviously the organic matter is more important.

Does it take a lot of coarse sand? Well, sure it does. If you have hundreds of tons of clay soil in your yard, one sack of sand isn't going to do much. You're trying to change the proportion of large particles (sand) to small ones (clay).