You could till in another couple of inches of organic material. Maybe something a little more course than peat. A lot of the garden soil amendment products have a combination of forest mulch, peat, sand, etc.

Don't assume you have clay. Not all hard red soil is clay no matter what your neighbors tell you. There are two ways to test it. The jar test is easy and you can do it at home. The second is a real soil test, $25 from Logan Labs in Ohio. Where do you live, by the way?

Jar test: Get a straight sided jar, fill it half way with dry soil, take a picture of the jar with a ruler set up next to it to measure the height of the soil. Then fill it with water and 2 drops of liquid soap. Shake the jar for a minute and set it down. After 2 minutes take another picture with the ruler. After 2 hours take another picture with the ruler. After 2 days take another picture with the ruler. The measurements will tell you how much sand (2 minutes), silt (2 hours), and clay (2 days) you have. I would be surprised if you have any clay, and I say that after reading lawn care forums for 15 years. Very few of the people who claim to have clay have any clay. What they have is an imbalance of the salts (calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium) in their soil. Once the jar test tells you that you have little to no clay, then the Logan Labs test will tell you what your salt levels are. Either condition can be addressed, but if you try to fix a salt problem by treating it for clay, it will never get fixed.

You absolutely do not need to rototill the soil to prepare for grass. This is ESPECIALLY true if you are planting bermuda. If you have already rototilled, then you need to spend some time getting it to settle into something sort of level. Bermuda needs to be mowed very low for maximum density, so any holes or hills in the surface will scalp the grass.

Joel, if you get a soil test, I suggest you use a lab that gives recommendations along with results. Logan doesn't. It gives numbers but does not interpret the data for you. Logan on its standard test also doesn't do a pH buffer test so there is no way to know how much lime is needed, if pH needs to be raised. I have been trying to help with Logan tests when people post them asking for guidance. I address nutrient deficiencies, not soil balance. Ridgerunner isn't interpreting Logan tests anymore. Your state land grant university likely does soil tests. There are also other private labs. They will be addressing nutrient deficiencies, not soil balance. The person who used to interpret soil balance issues on this forum isn't participating here now.

Cleanup on aisle 3.

A soil test from LL or any other lab won't determine whether you have a clay soil or not. Yes, it will contain some information that will allow one to guess, but it's still a guess. The only test that provides a definitive answer on soil texture (clay, sand, and silt percentages) is a Physical Analysis Report. (LL calls theirs a particle size analysis and the fee is $30) Do you really have a need to spend $30 to see if you have clay?

If you decide to get a soil test (measures element content in soil enabling correction of deficiencies) from Logan Labs, you'll need to request that they supply an analysis ($20 fee in addition to the $25 cost of testing) as I am no longer analyzing Logan Lab Soil Reports and although IMO Becky is more than competent to analyze soil tests, she prefers not too as is her right. Unfortunately, I am unaware of any person here on GW capable and willing, unless, of course dchall is volunteering--he DOES keep recommending them.

An update for those who saw my previous list of alternative labs, A&L Labs has renamed themselves Waypoint Analytical and it appears that many of the old A&L independent Labs (from throughout the west to east coast) have combined under this name. Although I can't vouch for them yet and haven't seen their new pricing list, this new company looks very promising with a broad testing capability.

As always, the preferred lab of PACE remains Brookside Laboratories. A very reputable lab even if they don't yet provide recommendations.

You can ask a farmers co-op if they sell a lot of lime in the area, and if so what kind. Lime is a fertilizer for red clay, in the sense that it raises ph and unlocks the availability of nutrients. But if you have not tested nor asked around it is risky.

tricky said: Lime is a fertilizer for red clay, in the sense that it raises ph and unlocks the availability of nutrients.

How does that work?

Rain increases the quantity of H2 in clay which is not as easily stripped out as O and also the inherent aluminum in the clay is not leached as easily either, so in this tight fine particle oxygen deficient environment the increasing H is measured as a lower PH and the Al picks up some charges becoming active, reactive, and toxic.

Some ions are lardasses. Ionic radius is a fancy term, but physical size and the energetic bonds being stripped all play a part. Oxygen is 20-30% larger than H for example. Squeeze that through a clay so fine it wont settle in a soil test and I suspect that even a physical stripping of O from H2 must be happening to the rainwater.

The AL is nasty in an acidic (high H) environment because like copper and some other active metals it can be quite reactive and that AL+ that is talked about is really just like a battery with extra charge looking to ground out on something and makes sparks or do some damage. They call it Aluminum toxicity but it is represented by things like malformed root tips that are so blunted that they cannot penetrated the soil.

A lot of this is not just a physical penetration, but electrical or rather chemical bonds being both formed and broken as the roots tip move through soil. So its a bad deal, but the calcium handles the H, which removes the charges also from the Aluminum, and it becomes a more stable aluminum molecule called Gibbsite that wont hurt much or give you Alzheimers.

The Calcium and usually magnesium in dolomitic lime are gonna also replace two leached out micronutrients in addition. Usually some Potassium sulphate handles the S and potassium leaching that is also common in clay although a lot of fertilizers have that in them.

The lime is a lot like putting baking soda into vinager. Some fizz happens in addition to a large reduction in electrical potential energy given off as heat energy used to form a gas, so it bubbles.

Once the roots are not being stunted they can access the nutrients that are actually quite abundant in clay. Its a mineral soil though, so proteins are very useful to enhance the biosphere as it is usually starving to death trying to eat rock.

This link is useful. Well, you might go blind, but it is chock full of on topic search terms.

http://broome.soil.ncsu.edu/ssc051/Lec6.htm

@tricky: I did a little research specifically on red clay and it seems red clay is acidic mostly in the south. This makes sense as you are from AL. I think some of your chemistry is suspect, but I get what you are saying. If your red clay is down around a 5 pH, you can lime it to bring it up.

Keep reading. The soil taxonomic description is not complete without the subtype, which really should be named climate type. And yes, we have Ultisol, the oldest soil. Specifically Udult, the humid climate subtype, which besides having a name I cannot relate to, also means that the water is the driver of leaching and acidity as it moves down through the soil. While soil similarities will exist in ultisol around the world, the climate type fundamentally changes amendments. Here is a link for you to find your general soil type, once you zoom in and find the color, the legend is on the menu and you can google up the rest. Can you believe our soil is low on sodium? No wonder we want salt on everything. It makes you wonder.

http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=0edea1c7bbb84ba5842d20483af11679