soil amendment question [bad clay soils]
tj starkey
7 years ago
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toxcrusadr
7 years agotj starkey
7 years agoRelated Discussions
To amend or not to amend? Clay soil...
Comments (22)"It seems that it is highly recommended to plant peach trees in raised beds from the experience on this board. Does anyone have a good link or more detailed directions as far as how to do that? What type of soil do I need? How deep do I dig the hole? How high should the bed be?" For my peach trees I use mounds and terraces. It doesn't seem to make a difference how tall the mound is. Some of my mounds are 1' tall, others started out 4' tall (before settling). The peach trees do about the same either way. Some people enclose their raised beds with a raised border of some kind. I think that's fine too. I don't think it makes much difference what soil you use for the raised beds/mounds. Several years ago, I installed drain tiles in the orchard area (The drainage was horrid and I was tired of losing peach trees.) In places we had to excavate to a depth of 4' to install the tile. What we dug out was pure clay. I used this material for some of the mounds. The peach trees have done fine in the clay mounds. Per the above posts, I would only use mounds if the drainage is poor. But since you mention puddling, I strongly suspect you could benefit from raised beds/mounds. Mounds not only provide good drainage, they also loosen the dirt so there is minimal resistance for the roots to spread. Mulching on top keeps the soil moist longer into the growing season, further encouraging root growth. It's hard for peaches not to succeed when they have moist (but not overly wet) loose soil with no weed competition and plenty of sunshine. Here's a picture that's a couple years old. You can see some tall and shorter mounds. Some of the older trees aren't in mounds. The drainage tile helped them. Here's a pic of some terraces I built last fall for planting peaches this spring. By the way, I don't bother with mounds for more water tolerant trees like apple, pear and plum, unless the drainage is really bad....See MoreClay soil eating up amendments
Comments (22)Anyone have experience with long term (say 10 years) soil amendment? Yes, but we have to define what kind of amendment we want ;) The organic matter gets 'eaten', not by the clay soil, but the organisms in that soil. That organic matter doesn't last long is actually a very good thing even though it feels like lots of work. The decomp of the OM leads to increased fertility as well as formation of humus which aids in keeping those tiny clay particles from sticking to each other. The OM break down also leads to improved tilth which is simply individual soil particles getting glued together to form larger particles by secretions from the soil critters as they do their thing. This improves drainage and enables more oxygen to reach into the soil and nourish roots. However, if despite all the advantages of using OM to improve soil qualities you still wish a more permanent way to improve drainage/aeration of the soil and reduce the rate it compacts/clumps etc. then you can use a product called Turface. It's a calcined clay product used for sports fields. Unlike the clay you have now, this is fired at high temps so it remains very stable and never becomes 'muck'. It's not like pebbles that have no internal porosity either, it's incredibly porous. A substitute would be calcined DE which is sold by Napa Auto Parts stores as 'Floor Dry'. You can read more about Turface here. Click on the tab at the top "Where to buy" to input your zip code and find a local source. It lasts, literally, forever....See MoreWill plants that don't make it help amend soil or clay?
Comments (7)Do, do keep your photos of your yard now - and brag later! Before and after... Plectranthus ciliatus is a South African plant which does awfully well under trees. Awfully. In a lot of our areas it settles down and suppresses native plants with much efficiency. Frost whacks it back but it does recover to go on its way. Zones 9-11 usually, but will probably do its best in a zone 8 microclimate. OK for a patch but you'd have to be desperate to bulk plant it, IMO. I've not been clear, and I apologise. Humus is ancient compost. When all the bacteria, fungi, bugs, worms and weather have finished with the banana skin you popped into your compost bin humus is what is left - and a thin layer it is, too. That's why gardeners keep adding more of it. Mulch is the top layer. It can be 'hard mulch' such as gravel or shells. There are some plants which do brilliantly with that kind of mulch - lavender, for example. There's reflected heat for the top and cool feet for the roots. It is also surprisingly good at retaining moisture. Softer mulch such as bark cambium or nuggets. Single season mulches such as a layer of newpaper topped with grass clippings or shredded small (ie no fatter than quarter inch diameter) twigs and green leaves. Always put mulches on when the ground is wet. Know that having the mulch can 'slow down your season' because the soil stays cooler. That can be either a drawback - or a plus if your hot weather comes in with a rush and saddens any flowers you have out. In the 'middle' of these two - humus and mulch - is compost. And it varies a lot. You can put it on when you can still tell what some of the ingredients were - and use it as mulch. Or you can wait for a couple of years and use it when it has a nice earthy smell, feels delightful to put your hands in, and you'd never know what it was made of. Making compost is a bit like making bread dough. If you can do one - you've a good chance of success with the other. It's all about ingredients and activators, warmth and moisture. It is NOT tricky. Nature does it all the time. Look at what happens to fall leaves... What you the gardener are trying to do is to increase the thickness of the humus-rich layer on the top - and the depth to which roots can go - plus the worms. My own personal view as a clay soil gardener is to minimise the amount of digging/rototilling that's done from year to year. The worms set up their runs and burrows and start shifting food particles down to where the roots can make use of the food - and we come and remake the bed! Dig over when you take out plants at the end of a season, add more compost on top and fork it through the top 6-12 inches (it will happen!), then mostly leave it alone - and stay OFF the beds as much as possible. When fall comes - stash some plastic totes in the vehicle - ignore the stares - and scrounge as many fallen leaves as you legally can. You can either put them directly on bare soil, or into the compost heap. Or, best of all, hold them in a plastic container, add some water so they're damp, and let them rot in their container in a quiet patch in the garden for a couple of years or so to turn into precious leaf mould (aka humus). It's great for adding to containers for growing plants that like a touch of 'soil' in the mix to do well....See MoreSOIL- to amend or not to amend? That is the question!
Comments (7)I have red clay soil and it can be turned into beautiful garden soil with the addition of organic matter. We're in our 16th year here and the soil in the areas we've amended bears little resemblance to the clay we started with. We added organic matter to it as much as we could in the early years, amending each area well before planting. Then we mulched, and we continue to add mulch regularly. As the mulch decomposes, it further enriches the soil. Red clay is full of minerals and plants grow great in it once you've added organic matter to improve its tilth and drainage. Have you ever gone for a walk in a woodland? Ever notice how brown, humusy and rich the soil is there? We have about 10 acres of woodland filled with beautiful native plants of all kinds. The soil is brown, rich, humusy....just gorgeous, rich soil. When we first moved here, I wondered why the soil there was so gorgeous when just a few yards away in the area where we had built the house, we had dense, compacted, hard-as-concrete red clay. I incorrectly assumed the woods grew there because the soil was so great. Then, in our 2nd or 3rd year here, we transplanted a bunch of tiny oak trees out of the woodland and up into the yard area. Guess what we found? There was about 8 or 9" of brown, humusy soil, but once you dug down that deeply, it was the same yucky red clay we had up the hill where we built the house. Those gigantic trees might be growing in humusy rich brown soil, but they started growing in red clay and their roots are deep in that clay. Over the last few decades, as leaves, bark, dead trees, other dead plant material, insects and even wild animals died and decomposed there on the floor of the woodland, they all combined to created that brown, humusy rich soil. So, in an odd way, the red clay---by being rich enough to feed and nourish the trees when they sprouted---in essence created that brown, rich soil. No one dug out all the old yucky red clay dirt and replaced it with brown rich soil.....it happened naturally, in its own way and its own time. To enrich our soil, we added any form of organic matter we could to the soil....compost, chopped/shredded autumn leaves, pine bark fines, composted animal manure....you name if....if it was organic (from nature), we added it. We added lava sand, Texas green sand, soft rock phosphate....you name it....all in the name of improving the soil. As the soil got better, earthworms and all other manner of earth-dwelling creatures thrived in it and further improved it themselves. When we were searching for land here, I deliberately searched for land with clay as opposed to the fast-draining sugar sand common in my area, or even the brown sandy loam found in some parts of our county. Given the choice, I'd choose red clay every time. It is a lot easier to amend it than it would have been to amend the sand, which tends to drain much too quickly in our area which stays much too dry most years. With red clay, so many nutrients are already there. With sugar sand, the nutrients aren't there and you have to add them. All that clay needs in general is organic matter added to it to make it great soil. I've never regretted choosing property with clay soil. We actually have a few pockets of sandy soil, and I have more trouble with them. Among other things, voles tunnel through the sand and eat everything they encounter. I'd be a raving lunatic by now if we had only sandy soil and not clay because the voles would have eaten virtually everything I've ever planted. Don't fear your red clay soil. It likely is highly fertile and only needs to have organic matter added to it to make it both retain water properly and drain well. Once that aspect of clay soil is fixed, it is perfect. Dawn...See More
lazy_gardens
7 years ago
wayne_5 zone 5b/6a Central Indiana
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agotj starkey
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agowayne_5 zone 5b/6a Central Indiana
7 years agotj starkey
7 years ago
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