Be very careful adding any kind of sand to clay. It can help, but only if you're willing to ad an awful lot of it (I've seen numbers as high as 45%). If you add enough, it will permanently change your clay and make it better able to absorb water.

If you don't add enough, you'll make adobe. If you add sand and straw, I think you'll get bricks.

A safer approach is to add a lot of organic matter. If you add a lot, it'll help a lot. If you add a little, it'll help a little. It will never make things worse.

The only drawback is that it breaks down and you need to add more every year.

Hi Cyndi,

I second what BP said! If you are going to use sand, builderÂs sand or sharp sand is what you want to use, but I think youÂll do a lot more good by spending the money on some good quality compost or several bales of Canadian peat which is moist and completely "fluffed" before you mix it in. I donÂt know if youÂve been trying to improve big areas or what, but I recommend just doing a major improvement job in the immediate area when youÂre planting individual plants. Dig your hole at least twice as big as you need and mix in 1/3 to 1/2 moist peat before you backfill. It may seem to take forever, but eventually it will make a difference. If you have a large area, I recommend buying a yard or twoÂdepending on how big it isÂof a good quality organic compost and renting a rear end tiller, and tilling it in really well.

And, yeah, sand and straw and clay is going to make adobe bricks when it driesÂwhether you shape it like bricks or not! Sharp sand wouldnÂt work as well as play sand for brick making, but I still wouldnÂt recommend trying that.

Skybird

I don't know if you have a source like this, but here in Utah County, I buy loads of compost from a yard maintenance company. They charge $15 a yard, and they'll deliver any amount for a service charge of $25 more. When I only need a little, I borrow a friend's trailer, but when I've needed 10 yards or more, I've paid them to deliver and dump a load on the street in front of my house. It's wonderful stuff, made from tree limbs, leaves, and grass clippings obtained in their maintenance jobs.

It's much more cost effective than buying bags at a garden store.

This topic comes up once in a while on the composting forum and wow do the sparks fly concerning sand or no sand. bpgreen is right, clay + sand + straw is the recipe for making adobe bricks. I'm going to try that some day. Personally, I have clay soil and struggle with breaking it down. This year I've stepped my efforts up by tilling a bunch of compost and steel manure into the soil (in spring) and then mulching (after planting) with a good layer of grass clippings and then a thick layer of (half way finished) compost. I'll do this again a couple of times this year so a constant stream of compostables are going in, but no sand for me. I don't think that my soil is quite soft enough YET to grow good carrots but everything else I've planted seems to like it.

~Yago

Please don't add Peat moss...just plain ole compost like mushroom compost. You'll be smart to remove 1/2 the clay and dump it somewhere and replace with the compost. Peat has no nutrients unlike compost and worse, it is acidic which is NOT what many native plants want....especially the xeric.

If you're planting roses, yews or any plant that likes a more acidic soil, then add peat. But put it in a wheelbarrow and put the hose in there and keep mixing it up with your hands until you have "goop", lol. THEN it will hold moisture....If you don't, it will stop water from getting to the plant.

Oh, Jant, our soil out here is so alkaline we could add peat for the next 50 years and still not have acid soil. It's extremely difficult to grow acid loving plants out here because it's almost impossible to acidify the soil enough. Peat is pretty much the only thing I do add when I'm planting anything, and I add a lot, and they love it. It's the best thing (except for homemade compost) I've ever found for the clay soil out here.

Skybird....I only added peat once to my front yard where Yews were the ONLY evergreen that would grown in total shade....didn't want Mahonia. I took out about 75% of the SOLID clay and then mixed peat/compost/top soil in thirds. Those were the happiest plants I eva saw, lol!

But, I found with xeric and rock garden plants that sharp draining soils with clay, gritty sand and simple compost in thirds made them compact instead of lanky which richer soils can do to a plant.

What are you growing usually with the peat additive?

OH, gypsum is a WONDERFUL ammendment to clay...always did that too.

Lots and lots and lots of perennials and as many ornamental grasses as I have room for. And if I could afford it, IÂd mix a whole lot of peat into my veggie area which would help a whole lot more than the grass mulch I now do which gradually composts into the soil helping it a little bit more each year. I bought a bunch of (cheap) bagged composted manure to mix in this year, and it helped some, but moist (Canadian) peat is the far and away winner as far as IÂm concerned for improving soil as fast as possible. I canÂt even imagine the time and money and work involved in completely removing soil and replacing it with something else. IÂm happy with what God put here, and IÂll just keep slowly improving it to suit me. (I donÂt ever use sand.)

Every time I look at the mushroom compost at Home Depot it seems sandy/gritty to me. Is there sand in it?

I'll be curious to see what others have to say about mushroom compost. I've never used it because I already have enough mushrooms growing in my perennial beds, and I'm afraid I'd just be introducing more spores with the compost. Always wondered if that was true or not!

Skybird