Add clay to sandy soil, not sand to clay soil. Gypsum is what you need to open up clays. 1kg per square metre. It can increase pH so you may also need to supplement a bit of sulphur later. Gypsum works quickly to break up clay.
If you mix sand and clay together you more or less have cement. I wouldn’t try that. In my opinion just keep adding wood chips on top and leaving it. It seems to heal all problems.
Agreed, look up One Yard Revolution, his back yard was clay I believe and just added woodships on his walking pads, a few years later he was able to plant tomatoes whenever he ran out of space on his beds.
Sand and clay are like your soil bases and you need loam or organic matter to really make it soil. I like to try adding more organic matter first then the sand or clay back in as I find it makes it easier to mix it all in. Imo clay base is the hardest to work with as I started with sand bases from doing fish tank soils and working anything into a high clay content is just a lot of work while starting with sand is just mixing. And with sand I like using dry clay to mix in while with clay bases I try to get it as moist as possible to make it easier to mix.
Im with you on adding sand. The clay in Glenmore is so obstinate in fact Ive been laid up for nine days specifically because of it. Thank my creator for my wife. We’ve been adding peat, compost and all kinda of organic matter, treating each bed as a separate environment. I do all the forking using a small two wheel tiller only when I have to, and we are getting positive results. Glenmore clay though. Like a nightmare. I hate absolutes but adding peat, compost and other organic matter is the only way. Its the only way to really aerate and get life thriving. Sand I find makes it worse.
Our farm was rented out for many years before my dad bought it 22 years ago. We have a lot of manure, and we use cover crops. It has improved our soil unbelievable. We almost use no fertilizers. Just a bit of nitrogen.
Sand and clay make a weird goo. I have clay here in California, and I find it really helps to add gypsum along with compost/mulch/organic matter. Peat would probably be fine. More important would be getting plants and worms in there to do the work for you. Daikon radishes are my go-to plant for this. Probably other things work too.
I live in East Africa and have struggled mightily over the last 18 months with our clay soil here. I bring in cow manure and river hyacinth to compost by the dozens of dump truck loads a month. I do not have access to soil amendments like peat moss or coconut choir. Palm fronds seems to not compost, and I was wondering if I could try to further amend the soil with the fibrous material in the fronds. Anyway, I learn a lot from your channel, and slowly, slowly am getting my farm where I can grow things.
Adding organic matter is easily the best way to improve most soil conditions for growing, however it doesn’t always have the microbes required to break it down. You could check out some KNF practices, may help
Try if possible to see what crops can make money as perennials, so you don't have to work the soil while you build organic matter with your cow manure. If you need to grow the normal annual crops, then build as much organic matter as possible, even from compost toilets - as long as its done safely.
Go to the oldest forest near you with a large bucket. Find an area that water builds up during storms and move all the leaves... you should see beautiful crumbly black leaf mold compost there. Take that and mix some into water that doesn’t have chlorine or chloramine and cover your garden in this tea. Do that tea once a week and you’ll introduce many microbes into your garden to make your nutrients easily available to your crops. Also, try growing borage, comfrey, morninga, and even dandelions... all of these plants are nutrient accumulators. you can compost them and mulch with them feeding your soil.
Can add lots of clay to sand, but don't add lots of sand to your clay is usually the guideline. It's faster to till ammendments into your clay and it works if you don't keep doing it, but my best soil I never tilled at all not even once. It often damages your clay's structure. No clay is too hard, dry or poor to improve 👏
Well that was close to no information. Just like everyone else add compost glad you said peat. Was hoping for a lime mention. I guess it’s something with the soil science with the polarity of the soil. Adding lime to clay helps big time to loosen it. Look at gardening in Canada Ashley is a soil scientist. From Saskatchewan. She’s great
"Ive never seen clay soil that was so bad that made me say, whoa man we have to change the composition of this soil." Well that's what I have for at least 4 feet from my foundation here in Kansas City. They do it to buttress the concrete foundation and they add 1 inch gravel. So far I'm a foot down and the water pools after rains for 2 hours. It is like pond clay. I am removing it from 2 feet from the foundation onward with regular garden soil so I can grow better plants.
Where I live in high elevation NM, this is the soil we have. 8-12 inches of horrible clay, then caliche. It is the worst soil I've ever seen in my life. I was digging holes everywhere and composting directly into those holes. Covering them and letting them decompose. But nothing seems to work here except raised beds and pots. I am trying to use some cover crops that are supposed to fix this issue. but we'll see. Right now, it's horrible.
You have to really be on top of it. We have a similar environment. Iv added a ton of lead materials, iv added alot of wood chips and iv started using Fermented plant juices to get that soil live booming.
I add six semi laods of sand. It wasn't necessary compost was a way better call. Now I gave a sand layer right above the compaction layer, with eight to ten inches of compost on top.
You should see my clay! I sent it away to the cooperative extension to ask for advice, and they sent me back my check saying that they can only charge the fee if they can give advice. They had no advice to give me. It was 100% clay and 0% organic matter. :(
I feel they same with sand it feels sketchy I have areas in my yard where theres sand in some areas of the clay and it dry out fast it like the water goes right threw it peat moss and compost would probably do way better . I agree with u . Sand is good for others things like indoor propagating but not so good for clay if u want to grow plants in your clay it's better to mixs peat moss and compost
I live in rural west coast Oregon and we have the thickest red clay soil here. In the area around the house, we added woodchips and grass clippings (aka basically compost) to the area we wanted to plant and that did the trick. Just spread them out about 2 inches thick on top and went at it with the shovel to mix it all in and break up the clay. Im looking up stuff for my neighbor who's got the same soil. probably going to do the same method for their stuff
I never added sand but organic matter, introucing worms and planting specific plants for it and it always work. Plus mechanical treatment with all of it. In one year it's already good to go if it's not way to heavy. Also it's important to take care of it two times a year
The clay and sand myth has to STOP. Everyone repeats this nonsense without any evidence whatsoever, and without acknowledging that sand and clay alone do NOT make cement. Period. I have leveled my clay bluegrass Midwest lawn multiple times with mountains of sand and it has improved my soil DRASTICALLY. When I pull up soil samples every spring I have inches of beautiful clay soil.
In E Central Florida on Merritt Island , up on the north end , near the Kennedy Space Ctr. we had 3 acres , house and 3000 sq ft mist house for our propigation to line out our small landscape nursery and raised a garden organically for almosr 40 yrs and were fortunate to have two types of soil one was the native local muck with tons of organic matter and another comprised of loamy sand and shell and Marl which is a gray clay with lots of rock minerials and oolite limestone which is the cover for our fla aquifer we mix the two soils together and add compost and manures and viola' world class growing medium . Its too bad that all of fla dosn't share this diversity of soil types where as Sugar Sand is king in Fla .
Lol, woops. I just brought in a bunch of sand for my heavy clay soil, already dumped it around and not in a very good manner. Guess a lesson learning is coming. But also got weeds aka cover crop going well, gonna cut and till, add in rice hulls and leaf compost, then cover with cut weeds etc and prolly cover w landscape fabric to get to breakdown over fall and winter. I got time. When you can pick up a basketball size peice of perfectly layered clay, "cement" doesnt really scare me cause it already was cement...
The sand will help but not as much as organic matter. Just keep adding compost (best option) , manure, wood chip, straw, cover crops to the surface. No need to till in after initial tilling with sand
If your building a garden on heavy clay and can get some cheap compost and top soil and have lots of woody material you can chip up I’d just build up lay down card board then mix top soil with compost and hill up your rows and wood chip pathways I recently built my mom a garden it was thick clay and got water logged easy so now I’m above the clay the wood chip are breaking down attracting worms I see tons of clay castings in my wood chip pathways let the worms do the tilling aerating the clay
I did sand a few years ago. Forget it, I have no idea where it went, gone. I am doing wood, poop from animals even the dirty earth from my wells, they have been cleaned, had more than 1m of dirt in the bottom. The good stuff, earth is great now, soft and rich. Forget the sand!!
Yes, sand is oni one of the structures to add. IF sand is added 12" of on an existing 12" raised bed, it works MUCH better than leaving it. I grew on a SWAMP. The sand helped with the strawberry production.
Not always @Rocketman0407; sometimes, you need a custom-formulated solution. Consult Mo Segad - he's a consultant, business-minded and scientist as well.
Bare clay soil need living microorganism to make it crumble, the job root plants did if they were there. Microorganism need a lot of compost, wood chips and oxigen. You must till the soil, once and deep. Let the root plants do the rests.
If you haven't seen that much clay you need to see my soil in Georgia. 2-3 inches of new construction grade topsoil, below that is hard packed Georgia red clay. How would I fix this? I have a tiller, beyond that what should I add? Total acreage is 2.07 acres and half of that is tall pine trees. I'm working on cutting down the pines. Was planning on tilling the 6" of pine stray into the soil after grinding the stumps down.
Absolutely... hard clay soils tend to have unavailable calcium and/or overall low counts when compared to Mg. Building organic matter is going to be the biggest limiting factor outside of Calcium.
Hi, Curtis! We live in Northeastern New York. We get lots of snow and cold weather. I'm fairly new to gardening, and need your advice. We have compacted clay soil and have a lot of crab grass.I've noticed we have more worms this year and fewer grubs. We've been tilling a small garden patch for about five years now, and have been adding compost as we can, but we haven't added much sand, which I was considering for this growing season. Our soil is probably lacking a lot of nutrients and minerals. Would you recommend putting in a little sand or bolstering the soil with more compost and bone meal? Would you recommend tilling or just leaving the compost on top? We haven't planted yet this year. It's been around 50-53 degrees and rainy, if that makes any difference in your answer. Thank you!
Clay actually has a high organic and mineral content already. The particles are so small (microscopic) though that it’s difficult to work. Broadforking and adding compost will help a lot. Putting in diverse cover crops will help even more.
We have a compost processing center near us. The mountains of compost they have have smoke coming off them. When the piles reach a certain temperature, then it’s ready for them to sell. Most home improvement stores sell bags of compost. Our trash pick up also sells compost.
You haven't seen clay soil that is "so badly clay, you thought you really have to change the composition of this soil"....well where have you been lol? I literally can't plant certain types of plants in my yard because of it. It splits wide open in summer unless I water daily. It sucks. (KC, MO)
Hi everyone🙂its funny you are all complaining how clay is bad. I just had dug out a vegetable patch in my sandy garden and brought clay. I removed about 30cm of sand to fill it with clay😂 if u find it difficult to grow in clay , u should try my hydrophobic water repelling dry ash mf-sand soil.😂 Theres nothing in this world that is worse than a soil wchich refuses water to sink in. Trying to water it was impossible. Water would stay on top of the sand , even with 3weeks of non stop rain, my precious ashes would have absorbed 1cm of moisture. I bought this yellow clay , and poured water at the side of heap that was brought. It soaked in❤😂 i dont care it may be hardening ,the most important is it drinks water. I am so happy i have clay finally😂 i will be adding compost, manure and some woodchips/sawdust , and more dung. I am SO HAPPY to have clay😂
I take a huge dump in my garden and that seems to help fertilize it, then my cat comes along and does the same thing, then my dog. And we have great fruits and vegetables... that I can tell you
