You need to get a book called "Hands-On Agronomy" by Neal Kinsey. Or you can get the DVD short version of that info, but it's not as comprehensive. They tell the how and why of getting your soil nutritionally balanced. Going blind into your soil improvement is usually a waste of money. Find out what's wrong, what's right, and how you need to tweak it with a GOOD lab test. Just adding compost or cover crops isn't going to solve the problem. If your soil nutrients aren't in balance, your pH will be wrong and you're going to have nothing but problems. Too much of one nutrient can tie up the availability of others. Some areas of the country are totally lacking necessary elements, and you'll have to add them. Both the book and the video are in the library systems. If your local library doesn't have them, request an interlibrary loan. I don't have anything to do with these people, but the book and DVD make so much sense that I'm going to get my soil tested by them. They will test it and give recommendations on how much of what you need to add or change. Sue Here is a link that might be useful: Kinsey Agricultural Services

It is wonderful to get so many responses! Thanks to all of you. IpmMan - an air spade, really? The video attached sure didn't look as if it was being used on clay soil, but it might be a great way to kill off the grass in an area where you want to place a new bed. I don't have a diesel air compressor - I do have a small electric air compressor, but I don't know that it would have the power needed for this. I think the noise would drive me nuts, too - not quite the "communing with nature" gardening that I prefer. And then there are the earthworms - at least with a shovel, though it kills or damages some earthworms when you push the blade into the ground, at least you can rescue the rest of them in the dirt that you shovel up! My yard is seems to be primarily flat, but it is at the bottom of a slope so I do get the run off from other yards above mine - I hate to think of what chemicals that might also be coming with the run off. It has been a while, but a few years ago in late winter/early spring, we got so much rain in a two week period - very unusual for Colorado - that there was standing water in my back yard; the clay soil could only absorb so much. The standing water was primarily in the southeast corner of my yard, so I learned from that that nothing that can't tolerate occasionally wet feet should be planted in that area. I actually purchased a small portable electric sump pump and attached it to a long hose in order to siphon water out of the back yard and out the front driveway to the street! I will try the elevation method suggested by several of you, along with breaking up the bottom of the hole with a pick axe or crowbar to avoid the hard pan effect mentioned by Tunilla. And the shallow wide planting hole idea that you gave, gardengal48, also sounds like a good idea. I won't amend the soil that is below ground level, but will cover the root ball that is above the ground level with amended soil and then cover the entire planting area with a good depth of mulch - pine straw and pine nuggets is what I will be using from now on. I do have lots of earthworms in my yard so they should help with the aeration. treebarb - I have been meaning to get an actual PH reading for my soil for quite a few years now, but somehow never have gotten around to it. Did you send in samples from various parts of your yard, or just one sample? Did you consider trying any of the "do it yourself" kits or PH meters that seem to be available - or are they all pretty useless? I am glad to see that others are getting useful info from this thread; I empathize with all of my fellow clay soil sufferers. I do miss the rich, black soil of Vermont - the soil there is so nice even a two year old could dig a hole two feet deep with a trowel! :p Holly

Dave - I was open to suggestions, but was getting so much information that it was overwhelming... especially to a new guy. What I did learn is that I have to find what works in my area and what works for me. That's why I was struggling to come up with a solution of wanting to buy a rototiller, haul in top soil, etc. I personally knew all along what the problem was and it was just to expensive to fix so I was trying to look for the quick fix. I know I needed dump truck after dump truck load of dirt hauled in to raise the soil level... that was going to cost well over 10K by the time I bought the soil, hired someone to spread, seeded, watered, etc. The problem is that the entire area is to low. All the water is running towards this area. Here's my solution, If you can't beat the clay... work with it. I'm in the process of pulling all my fall 2013 plants up and reporting them to #3 & #5 containers. I don't want to spend 10K on hauling in all this topsoil, compost, etc. The spot where my major garden renovation at is low & it needs soil. I can mix all the compost in it I want, but I'm sure I'll still have problems since all the water on the property is running towards this area. Even if you add so much compost that the top 1' of the soil becomes loam.. it'll still fill up like a bathtub since under that is mostly clay. The only way to fix this problem is to build up the soil so the water runs off the property. My front yard is mostly clay... but it's built up that water runs away and I've never had a single problem. Here's what I'm doing. I've already contacted a few companies and got quotes. I'm meeting with them shortly. I'm digging a 100 x 50' pond in the "wet area" I posted a photo of earlier... out of this pond is going to produce 400 cubic yards of dirt (40 dump truck loads) they said. I'm using this dirt to build up the property and slope it into the wooded area of the property. Hopefully all goes well... kind of scared me when they said they need to call in the soil scientists to run tests. It's free dirt & the pond is relatively inexpensive compared to the amount of dirt I would have to purchase. I probably won't plant until I establish all the grass, fill the pond, get the fish, build the dock, build the pergola, etc. I'll probably plant sometime spring or fall 2015 which is why I'm upgrading these #1 size plants to #3 & #5 to give them room to grow. When I do plant these, at least they will be a couple feet taller. On another note Ken - Looks like you may have been correct when you said not to give up on the ones you think I've lost. Most are still dormant... but one which I'm sure was gone now has soft buds.

The best medium to plant newly rooted figs in is one that provides the greatest amount of aeration and ensures that aeration for the expected interval between repots but is still something you can deal with as far as the intervals between watering. IOW, you'll get the best growth from a soil you need to water daily or even twice a day, but if that is too inconvenient, you'll need to adjust to something more tolerable. How much vitality you sacrifice for convenience depends almost entirely on how far you go in the other direction and how fast air returns to the soil after a thorough watering. E.g., if you were using a soil/plant combination that required daily watering and could magically change the soil to one that only required watering every two days, there would be some degree of sacrifice in potential growth and vitality. If though, you could magically change to a soil that required watering only every 5 days, there would be a considerable sacrifice in growth potential and vitality. Soils that remain waterlogged for extended periods kill roots, and the plant pays to regenerate those roots by spending energy it would normally have put toward increasing mass, more blooms or fruit, extending branches ...... You may be referring to something I wrote about roots: While fig cuttings may root readily in water, the roots produced this way are quite different from those produced in a solid, soil-like or highly aerated medium (perlite, screened Turface, very coarse sand, e.g.). Physiologically, you will find these roots to be much more brittle than normal roots due to a much higher % of aerenchyma (a tissue with a greater percentage of inter-cellular air spaces than normal parenchyma). If you want to eventually plant your rooted cuttings in soil, it is probably not best to root them in water because of the frequent difficulty in transplanting them to soil. The "water roots" often break during transplanting & those that don't break are very poor at water absorption and often die. The practical effect is nearly equivalent to starting the cutting process over again with a cutting having diminished energy reserves. If you do a side by side comparison of cuttings rooted in water & cuttings rooted in a solid well-aerated medium, the cuttings in a solid well-aerated medium will always (for an extremely high % of plants) have a leg up in development on those moved from water to a solid medium for the reasons outlined above. Al