What's the best way to loosen heavy soil?

I have heavy, clumpy (but not clay-clumpy) soil in one bed area. It always has been no matter how much compost I've added in, which has been mushroom compost and leaf mold. This area always seems to stay wet the longest as well. Plants never seem to thrive there unless it's something like Turtlehead. I can't even get Siberian Iris to grow there, well, I can't get Siberian Iris to grow anywhere....

What's should I add to get that heavyness out and get it to dry out faster? Thanks.

Vermiculite worked for me when I had problems like that.. lots of peatmoss and vermiculite.

I purchased a product called Clay-Cutter from my local nursery. Came in either 1 or 2 cu.ft. bags I think and tilled it into the base soil.

You might want to try greensand and/or gypsum

http://homeharvest.com/orgfertespoma.htm

If you brows through Home Harvest's site, you'll find all kinds of good stuff for your garden. I have purchased from them for the past few years with no problems.

Some of these pages ...

http://davesgarden.com/tools/tags/tag.php?tag=clay+soil

... might have useful information for you.

Thanks to all of you for your responses! I think I'm going to start with lots vermiculite and add more sphagnum peat. Hopefully that should work since it's not really clay, it just doesn't drain well I guess. Now to find a source for a large quantity of vermiculite!

I use gypsum.
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This message was edited Jun 2, 2009 4:04 PM

HoneybeeNC and heavenscape
- does gypsum help with heavy thick clay (clumpy tan/grey) found in the Carolinas?

and what is greensand??

have read add sand to clay. I did.
- later native Carolinians mused, "Clay + sand + heat = Cement"
- which subsequently did occur in those sun beds!

HoneybeeNC - is there really a way to get the tan/gray clay to actually function as soil?

If you did not have clay under your top soil, it would not hold water.

50glee - the summer of 2007 was my first experience with clay soil here in North Carolina. I built 24' x 4' x 6" raised beds - laid down layers of newspaper and cardboard over the grass. Purchased lots of different stuff from Lowe's and online - coir, peat, Black Kow manure, mushroom compost, earthworm castings, greensand, perlite, vermiculite, garden soil. Added organic fertilizers, lime, mycorrhizae, and probably a few more ingredients I don't remember. $2,000 later I had four beds suitable for raising vegetables!

The only problem we had the first two years was keeping up with the watering. The soil was so light and fluffy, it drained too well!

Last summer, I added a 5th bed with everything listed above, but without the peat moss - lots of coir. The coir is definitely better than the peat moss in my opinion.

Now that the underlying Burmuda grass is dead, I am able to dig down into the underlying clay and incorporate some of that, so the beds should hold more water.

Last fall hubby drove around the neighborhood and gathered 100+ bags of leaves - these are distributed in the walkways between the beds. The earthworms are turning the leaves into wonderful FREE castings.

This summer I have two Biostack composters. The contents of one were scattered amongst the strawberries and they responded immediately - even my hubby noticed how quickly they took off! There is something wonderful about coming home in the afternoon and picking/eating still-warm-from-the-sunshine strawberries fresh from the garden.

Next year I plan to add drip irrigation.

50glee - I just read about Greensand using Honeybees link above (June 02 post). Sounds like it is good for clay and sandy soil conditions. You'd have to read what it says, that would describe it better than I could. I have used it before in my beds, just handfuls around the plants. I had read somewhere long ago that it's good to place that around the plants at the same time you fertilize, just to act as a soil conditioner. I know our local garden centers carry it so I'll give it a try along with the vermiculite. I had also read that clay + sand = cement!

i did the same as honeybee--built upwards instead of digging down--layed out the layers of newspapers and then layered organic material on top --now i just keep adding leaves and compost on top and turning it over --

We are in plannning stages of total makeover of our back yard into butterfly garden. Heavy red clay soil and St. Augustine grass. Must elevate beds, of course, or we'll have a huge clay pot. But there are areas that due to drainage we cannot elevate more than 6 to 8 inches.

Do you have to wait a long time before planting if you layer the newspapers over St. Augustine grass? Do you use landscape cloth over the newspapers or just start adding soil? We have abundance of screened compost made from llama manure, shredded oak leafs, kitchen scraps and very hot St. Augustine grass clippings.

Thanks.

i can plant as soon as i want IF i don't mind planting down in the clay--i just cut thru the newspaper and plant---but since you are covering the st augustine you might not want to do that--i think i would lay it all down in early fall and plant in spring
the newspaper takes the place of the landscape cloth---if you use the cloth then the soil won't get the nice compost you have made--using newspaper means it will break apart and compost on the spot letting your added compost improve your soil

Well, for 29 years I've struggled with improving the red clay soil on this place. Any product there is, we tried it. LOL. It just can't be done. It devours anything it is amended with. You can amend and improve the top 6 inches with a lot of work, but you've still got a clay pan beneath it that holds water. Not good for plants and VERY detrimental to your house foundation and that's another many thousand $$$ to spend. The only way it works here is elevate and not dig into the clay because, literally, you can dig a hole and pour 1 gallon of water in it tonight and there will still be 1 gallon of water standing in it tomorrow ! In the last 2 years, we have completed overhaul of our landscape on 3 sides of the house by being very careful that we not dig into the "clay pan" any more than 2 inches and have a 4-inch drop in elevation from wall of house to the outside edge of the bed to ensure drainage. All of that was done by totally plowing off existing grass and beds. Adding new soil mix on top, lowering the level of remaining lawn in some cases as much as a foot to achieve drainage. The results have been wonderful but removing the grass, etc., is a HUGE amount of work, close to impossible to get all the grass out, especially volunteer bermuda.

So I'm eager to learn about newspaper on top of grass, etc. In fact, would cut the work in half, at least. How many sheets of newspaper? Any tricks to holding it in place while you're working on it? I can just picture me crawling around on the ground trying to hold newspaper down in our constant wind and putting soil down at the same time. ROFL. Oh, boy, my neighbors just thought I was crazy before - now they'll know for sure.

wet the newspaper lightly..then add some soil or mulch to hold it down..that is what I did..I get the wind off the nearby bay and it is consent wind...lol

I have always used raised beds over wet or clay soil. 10 to 20 " of raised beds look good and make anything grow. That is where I use my compost is in the soil I 'build' for the raised beds. You need drainage and gravity is your friend with raised beds.