My soil is full of clumps of clay and I'm wondering if this is the answer. Any issues with using it?
this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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I'm very much a beginner to this, so I don't understand much of what you've said (although I appreciate the info and will do some googling). I'm renting, the house was built about 30-40 years ago and I don't know what was done then.
There's one garden bed in particular that's full of lumps of clay. The soil is otherwise not too bad to dig, but the drainage seems fairly terrible. I've tried sowing seeds in there and very little germinates.
When you say amendments, would that be things like lime or gypsum, or fertilisers and soil improvers, or some other option I'm too much of a noob to know about?
Thanks so much for your help.
How big is the bed? If it's a drainage thing, you could add a shitpile of peat or other fulffy organic matter to improve drainage. Mix it in with a rototiller really well.
If the beds are small and relatively shallow, you could dig it all up, put a layer of gravel down, and then place the soil back over top, essentially making a french drain. And excess water will slowly make its way through and into the gravel layer.
When I talk about amendments, Yes, you're interpretation is right. I'm talking about things like gypsum, fertilizers, soil, improvers, biochar all kinds of crap like that. There's a lot of stuff out there. Some of it snake oil some of it's actually pretty good.
It's pretty big, and due to budget and being carless, it will need to be dug by hand. Peat isn't something I've seen where I am, are there other alternatives? Currently I've dug out all but the biggest plants and I've turned it into a compost pile (food scraps, coffee grounds, grass clippings). I figured I'd let that do It's thing for a few months, then dig it in and add amendments. Gypsum and lime keep being mentioned, so probably those and some blood and bone or similar. I want to grow veggies and herbs there if it's possible after all that.
I can get some products delivered from Amazon, if they sell useful amendments. Perhaps manure as well? I've gotten so much different advice, I feel like I'm just throwing everything at it lol. Doing something about the clay will make it infinitely easier to dig though.
That sounds pretty good, and will help. Improving organic matter content of the soil is what you want to do. Peat is good because it's fluffy, and as result, has a lot of pore space. You could use straw, I suppose, or small sized bark chips, and thoroughly mix. Think fluffy soil.
Don't mess with lime unless you're sure your soil has low pH. Gypsum is good, since it'll ad Calcium, which builds soil structure a bit, but it's primarily used to treat saline soils.
Alright, sounds like I've got a plan then. Thank you so much for all your help, I really appreciate it!