I am telling you guys (I guess you are all guys) that you are absolutely wrong. There are clay soils, and I mean heavy clay soils not soils with a little clay in them, that drain. You are assuming that all clay soils are one massive block that is either a hard brick or a sticky mass of goo. This is not the case. Did you look at those pictures? Granted these are soils that have not been Âimproved with cultivation. Drainage is as much a function structure as it is texture. A clay with strong structure can drain better than a loam with poor structure. The whole idea behind tillage is to improve structure. There isnÂt much you can do about texture (other than replacing the soil), so tillage is used to create a soil structure more conducive to crop growth (better drained). As we all know clays are the most difficult to till, too dry and you get big clods, too wet and it smears erasing any hint of structure that already existed. But if you get it just right clay can work up nicely and will drain Âat least for a while. Humus helps hold the structure, which is why kimmsrÂs patented answer of Âadd compost is a good idea. The organic material is not keeping the clay particles from sticking together; it is actually helping them stay together without melting apart when they get wet and therefore creating a stronger structure. Clay soils get a bad rap, they can be very productive. Granted they are moody and high maintenance, but so are Italian cars.

You can improve the drainage! I wrote this for someone else, but I think you'll find it applicable also. I've done this many times and seen this work to drain the clay in OH, in the subsoil compacted with heavy equipment after a housing development is built, and here in AL, it helps make the too-well-drained sandy soil hold moisture longer, have more tilth and fertility. If you've got more time than energy, like I do, smothering and lasagna is the easiest way to start a new garden bed for free, or almost. Sooo much easier than digging up grass. Just spread newspaper (about 10 sheets thick) or cardboard, overlapping well, until the area you want to be a bed is covered. Then cover the paper with 4-6" of finely shredded mulch and wait for the grass to die, usually 4-6 weeks but could be longer for some grasses. I've done this many, many times. My latest one is really ugly but I'm just trying to make lemonade out of lemons with this one... drought (probably aided by grubs) killed the grass here so I decided that would be the new sunny front bed I was considering. I did dig out a little spot that had hardly any grass and put some Cannas and Gladiolus there, a tiny baby maple tree, some Hibiscus cuttings which still just look stupid 'cuz they're "dead" sticks in the ground, then kind of working around it with smothering, and bark chips, which aren't my preference but I had them available. They don't stay in place if it ever rains really hard. Anyway, with this, I'm not planning to leave the bark chips there, they're just making sure the newspaper is held firmly to the contours of the ground to block the air and light from reaching the grass, which is what is needed to kill it. Whenever I can find more shredded hardwood, I'll replace the bark chips. Anyway, the newspaper decomposes and does not need to be removed later, just dig through it to add plants in the ground. I've also smothered grass with stuff that was handy, but does have to be removed to use the bed, like sheets of metal, old egg crate mattress topper, the bags of mulch that will cover the spot, whatever's handy. I think it's easier to wait for the grass to die than dig it up, and I don't mind if it has to get more ugly in the process of getting more pretty. One other benefit of smothering with a leave-in-place substance like paper or cardboard is that the weed seeds that may be in the ground are unable to germinate as they might be if you just dug up the grass and/or tilled. The lasagna comes into play if you add amendment layers to your smothering. For example, you could put the paper/cardboard, then kitchen scraps, ready to use compost, leaves, yard trimmings, whatever organic material (OM) that is handy, then the mulch (or not, if the other stuff is a thick enough layer to hold the paper in place and block the light.) It's not necessary to have lasagna layers when smothering, but when planting later, there's a huge improvement if a lot of OM was placed...

The clumping litter thing is good fodder for emails and that's about it. Not one reputable place has ever supported that hysteria. But back to the topic. Do you have a Mill's Fleet Farm nearby? Possibly other farm type stores might have deals too but I can buy 40# clumping cat litter at Fleet Farm for $7.49 full retail and they often put it on sale for as low as $5.50. Excellent cat litter too. Worked well in the Litter Maid and not all of the cheap stuff will. I don't go there often anymore so I haven't checked for a while plus I stocked up on different sales at Target. They often have sales where you buy 2 and get a $5 gift card at the register. That made the Tidy Cats 35# bucket about $9.50 and one time I had a $1 coupon so that's $8.50 for 35#. Tidy Cats is pretty good. Also bought some Scoop Away that netted out at about $11 for 2-28# (56# total) after the gift card deducted. The worst stuff I ever used was Cats Pride. I got that for what I thought was a great deal but ugh, awful stuff. Never again.

Hello All. Last year I experimented with various forms of diatomaceous earth (DE) and other oil absorbing products. The best product I found was Moltan OptiSorb (see attachment). This product has a slightly larger particle size than NAPA Floor Dry and, unlike some other similar products, does not break down when soaked or frozen. You can crush it with your fingers but the same is true of all similar products. Overall I found this product to be very stable. I mixed up a small batch of screened OptiSorb and pine bark and the trees I grew in that mix did very well. The soil mix held more water than usual, and so I watered less often. This product would be good to use in hot, dry climates. If you are looking to use an "oil absorbent" product I can recommend OptiSorb. If you use other similar products I suggest you test as Al mentioned before using it in your soil mixes. HTH TYG