Here is how you solve this problem. Place three inches of a good rich compost over the area you want to loosen up. Water it well. I mean saturate it three or four days a week. In four months you will have soil you can dig with a teaspoon. Do not, I REPEAT do not try to loosen clay dirt with sand. Clay + sand = cement. Microbial matter is what loosen's soil. By soaking the compost with water you are letting the microbes in the compost enter the soil so they can to do their thing - loosen the soil. Or, put your compost pile over where you eventually will wnat to have a garden. You will accomplish the same thing I already said to do. The earth under a compost pile will be the softest, most wonderful soil you could ever imagine having. Some people move the locaton of their compost pile avery couple of years for just this reason. Or, you could rent a heavy tiller and till in 4 incnes of pure compost - twice. Compost buffers the soil's ph and it puts organic material into the soil so it will stay soft. If you till soil without putting in enough organic material you will have rockhard soil again in a matter of weeks because you have not changed the compostion of the soil. Having clay soily is like walking a great big deck of playing cards. Clay particlse are big and thin. Organic material works it's way in between the particles - which allows air and water to move around in the soil. If you don't change the soil you will have what you always have. Water will not soften clay soil - organic matter will. Don't try to burry your scraps in the ground thinkingthe coons or rats, or other critters will not find it and dig it up. Unless you burry it a couple of feet deep they are going to find it and dig it up. Other than a stand-alone compoist pile, you hsve four choices. Make a raised bed. Make a lazagna bed. Do what I described above. Use a tiller to get as much (and I mean as much) organic material as deep into the soil as possible. For clay soil as hard as you descibe I would till 4" into the ground and then do another 4". Finally, remember, organic matter breaks down over time. If you don't continually add organic matter to the soil it will eventually revert back to the rock-hard dirt that you have now. Keeping soil soft and fluffy is an ongoing process. It is not a set-it-and-forget-it thing. Organic mateial has to be replenished in order to keep the microbial life alive. When you realize it you will understand that it is the living microbesd and their dead bodies that actually gets in between the clay particles and keeps them from sticking together. As the soil loosens, allowing air and water to freeely move, you will get worms to come because the living conditions will be good and there will be lots of microbes for the worms to eat. Yep, microbes are earthworm food - they don't have teeth to chomp lettuce, saw dust, garden waste, etc. They eat bacteria and fungi. You can only turn your hard clay dirt into soil by incorporating lots and lots of organic matierial into it. Tom P.S. If you till the garden bed, only do it this one time to get the process started. Aftre that just put the compost into the areas where you inend to plant crops. There is no need to till because the microbes move with the water as their mode of transportanion.

Dilly, this is where you want to be careful to separate what is possible from what is being done. I googled the phrase: the gene from a fish that lives in very cold seas has been inserted into a strawberry, allowing the fruit to be frost-tolerant. I found more than a page of sites that quotes that phrase, all from the anti-groups, and stated as fact. Then, I clicked on a link that wasn't an anti-group, and I pulled up what I believe is the correct version of the strawberry fish story: Genetic engineering involves the disarranging and recombining of gene fragments, often of unrelated species. By cutting a fragment of a genetic sequence and pasting it into cells of an unrelated species, scientists can insert a gene of one organism into an unrelated one. As a result, a plant may be fooled into accepting messages that turn its leaves a different colour, or promoters may be introduced into fish genes so they will respond in a desired manner when transferred into the cell of a strawberry eg producing a hormone for cold tolerance. While it has become well established in agriculture, genetic engineering is largely at the experimental stage in aquaculture. Most commonly, aquaculturists improve stocks or species by using the sperm of one strain or variety to fertilize the eggs of another. For example, a salmon farmer who wants to produce fish with high oil content may cross-breed a colder water salmon stock with another stock that is adapted to the warmer environment where the offspring are intended to be grown. Genetic engineering offers a speedier road to the same destination. And this from a PBS link: Moving genes across species to produce so-called transgenic life forms seems to many a radical step. One experiment, proposed but never carried out, to splice a flounder gene into a strawberry to protect it from frost, has caught the public imagination. It's the stuff of fear and myth. What have we created, fish or strawberry? I'm not trying to change anyone's minds about this, but I don't like the fear mongering. I want to let scientists experiment in all directions. It doesn't mean that we are going to have a world full of strawberry fish or pork potatoes.

You said we did not read this carefully, so I went back and read it carefully. It doesn't make sense. '...He did not date her. He never took her out anywhere they met ata sports bar and she would come in on the nights the deputies were there. Yes he made a mistake BEFORE we were engaged and married. When she came back some time later to tell him she was pregnant he DID tell her then that we were then engaged it was a few months later. She told him then that she was going to get an abortion. She then fell off the earth. Then even later she contacts him to tell him she kept it. He told her he was getting married. She was furious but she did try to get him to spend time with her. He said no. We got married.' Then later you said: 'She admitted to me clearly that she had "hoped" that he would stay with her because she was pregnant. NOT. He told her from the minute he found out that it was not going to happen and they were both at fault.' To recap: they met two nights in a row in a sports bar and had sex. They never had a date. So logically, there was no expectation of affection, friendship, love, or commitment. She disappeared out of his life, he disappeared out of hers. She never saw him again (per your DH) until two or three months later she popped up and told him she was pregnant. He said he was engaged. She said she was getting an abortion. She disappears again out of his life and he out of hers. Again they apparently both agree that there is no expectation of friendship, love, or commitment. Their actions indicate that they both accept it was a one- or two-night stand that meant nothing, that the pregnancy was unfortunate but meant nothing to either of them, and that they each had their own lives and no interest in each other. And yet, you said: "She admitted to me clearly that she had "hoped" that he would stay with her because she was pregnant. NOT. He told her from the minute he found out that it was not going to happen and they were both at fault." If she hoped he would stay with her...(and stays means he never left her, as in he continued the relationship after the two one-night stands)...why would she tell him he was getting an abortion and then drop off the face of the earth. Why wouldn't she be 'furious' that she was told otherwise. But that's not what happened. She told him she was pregnant and getting an abortion, he told her he was engaged and wasn't going to marry her--and then she (according to the story you heard from your DH) dropped off the face of the earth. Then out of nowhere about six or seven months later, she calls him and says the baby was born and she kept it. He says that he is just about to get married and suddenly 'she is furious' and tries to get him to spend time with her. But she does not let him see the baby much and she does not want child support. This also does not make sense. Why would she suddenly be 'furious' on their 4th contact in abt 10 months? If she wasn't furious when he stopped picking her up in the bar (if he did stop), and she wasn't furious when she told him she was having a baby and he responded that he was engaged, why would she suddenly be 'furious' once the baby is born and she hears for a second time he's getting married? If she's going to be furious that he's getting married, why wasn't she furious the first time she heard it when she told him she was pregnant? If the girlfriend and your DH really didn't have any contact except two one-night stands, and a quick conversation about pregnancy and abortion, why would she suddenly be furious about him about to get married when she hadn't had any contact with him for six or seven months and there'd never been any understanding of love, friendship or commitment between them? Do you really believe that she just dreamed it up in her head without any input from him? As you describe it, they were two rather disinterested strangers in the night at the time of conception, spent a few minutes together around month three discussing the pregnancy, abortion and his engagement; and then after the baby was born she popped up and is furious that he's getting married? Kelly, Kelly, Kelly...this does not make sense. Why was she furious? Because she believed there was going to be a different outcome, because she felt betrayed. And she felt that way because he led her to believe that she meant something to him. However, the story makes sense another way. He was seeing her and you at the same time. He proposed to you but kept her on the side and kept his engagement a secret, but he keeps seeing. She comes up pregnant and tells him and expects to get married, move in together, or move the relationship to another level of commitment. He waffles and sooths her with some excuse or some promise to delay her expectations and she's satisfied and continues to gestate and they continue to see each other. There's no talk of abortion, that's a story your DH came up to explain to you why he didn't confess the pregnancy earlier and to hide his continued involvement with the girlfriend. Then after the baby is born she expects him to step up to the plate, or she finds out about you. In any case, your DH is cornered and lets her know he's going to marry you, not her. She becomes furious at this point because she realizes she's been betrayed and used. There's another red flag. Per your story, she's a welfare no-account who hangs around bars and sleeps with strangers without caring about a relationship or commitment. Easy come, easy go. So she spent two nights running with a sheriff's deputy and then never saw him again. No big deal. So she's pregnant. She'll just have an abortion. No matter. It's just a thing that happens when you hang around bars and pick up strange men and have sex with them and then don't intend to see them again. Although maybe it's something you can use to get a man to marry you. So she's a calculating floozy who picks up strange men in bars and sleeps with them without a commitment unless she gets pregnant, in which case she wants to marry them, even though per your story she's spent two nights and one additional conversaton with him, when he told her he was engaged--maybe a total of 24 hours? Yet that's enough for her to disappear out of his life for months and months while carrying his child, then pop up out of nowhere and suddenly be furious that he's not going to marry her and that she "hoped" he would because she was pregnant. How would she know he was marriage material, a nice person, someone she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. How would any affection have time to develope if they only spent two nights together and then had nothing to do with each other at all for the next nine or ten months? If that were the case, there'd be no 'hoping' he'd marry her, there'd be no fury when she realized he wasn't going to. Also--considering she's a dellusional promiscuous bar floozy--your DH never questioned this was his child. He seems pretty confident that the dna test is going to prove him the father. Confident enough to spend money on the mother and attempt a relationship with the child. If she were just a easy bar pick-up, he'd be wondering if it were his child or not, or why she thought it was his child. There must be other candidates for fatherhood. And he'd hold off on the getting involved in her life until he knew for sure. Except it looks like he already knows for sure. And he knows because they've had more of a relationship than he's letting on to you. She's not a dellusional promiscuous bar floozy, she's someone he knows pretty well and has known for a while...and maybe if he plays his cards right he can keeps this going. Get his wife involved in his girlfriend's life--appeal to everyone's noblest sentiments by making it all about what's BEST for the baby. Interesting that she didn't want child support or anything from him except to see him alone with her baby (their own little family). Child support would not have created ties that would complicate her moving. He would send it to FOC, they'd record it and forward it to any bank of her choosing anywhere in the world. And not accepting child support does not avoid complications of her moving her child away from him. Whether he pays child support or not, if he's the bio father, he has rights, one of which may be to prevent her from moving. So what's the real reason she didn't want child support? Maybe because he's providing more than state guidelines to her secretly? Or maybe because she's accepted that he's married and he two timed her and she just wants to get away and not have to think about him again. I don't know. I just think that someone who 'hoped' a man would stay with her because she was pregnant and who was furious when she realized he was marrying someone else, and who will only get him visit his daughter alone in her apartment when her son is gone--would also insist on support, because support officializes a ties she seems to want. I don't know the particulars, but I do believe that you have been mislead. The story doesn't make sense. I know yo have to defend him, have to believe what he's told you. It must have been very painful for you to know he cheated on you with her just before you became engaged. This can't be fun and you seem to be making the best of things and seem to be trying to be a good sport. I just fear that you are gullible and are likely to be hurt.

Sorry to jump on this thread - I thought it the best place to ask: Ive been on my own long mission to improve my plants health and I have found these forums and its members priceless (a big thank you!). In particular I have had great success with Al's 5-1-1 but wanted to give the Gritty Mix a go. Problem is I have not found the ingredients (I know this has been discussed countlessly but I wanted a bit more clarification before I spend more money for something I might not use) I have sourced: • Granite in 2-5mm • Pine bark - I need to hammer mine down to the correct size and sieve but okay • Turface - no where to be found where I live!!! So I have two alternatives for the water retaining portion of the mix from what I have read but the information is confusing me as to its appropriateness / water retention Pumice ~5mm Tuff / Red rocks 4-8mm - from my reading this is a volcanic rock and I have a attached picture of the small particles and a larger one for reference. Im leaning towards the small lava rocks but I don't know how it will affect the soil: Does it hold less water than Turface? Would that mean I need to water more often? I live in a hot country so im not sure I can commit myself more to my plants than i already do. I know its not a formula set in stone and it can be adjusted but I feel like im going into this blind. Also which plants would I plant the Gritty mix in and which for 5-1-1 as im confused about this. I have ficuses, monsterra adansonii and leaning towards getting more succulents. thank you again !!!