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The soil in my backyard has very few rocks but the clay is so hard and dense it may as well be a brick wall.
by chongli 7mo ago
The soil in my backyard has very few rocks but the clay is so hard and dense it may as well be a brick wall.
- thatcat 7mo agoWhen it's wet, but not saturated - like 1-2 days after a rain - you can decompact the soil with a strong metal broadfork and leave the soil in large block aggregates. This keeps the soil structure and maintains some fungal web connections. Add nutrients, wood chips, stick and sand below aggregates and in cracks. Cover with compost and plant clover to cover.
- greazy 7mo agoThis is amazing info thank you. What is the purpose of planting clover?
- pja 7mo agoClover is a nitrogen fixing plant - used to be that you’d plant clover for a year in between other crops to make your soil fertile again. (It’s the bacteria in the roots that do the actual nitrogen chemistry.)
- Angostura 7mo agoReally good advice above. But if you want to cheat a bit, I used https://www.thompson-morgan.com/p/vitax-clay-breaker--25-kg-box/6CB23TM https://www.thompson-morgan.com/p/vitax-clay-breaker--25-kg-... on my heavy clay garden and it helped a lot, in combination with extra organic material etc.
- thatcat 7mo agothis is just gypsum in case anyone was wondering
- thatcat 7mo agoClover fixes nitrogen and roots help stabilize the voids in the soil. They sell seed mixes called "ground cover mix" that includes other plants and will help keep the soil from recompacting when it rains and keeps weeds at bay.
- darkarmani 7mo agoAre you sure it is just clay? Sandy clay packs even tighter than just clay: https://www.uaex.uada.edu/farm-ranch/crops-commercial-horticulture/horticulture/ar-fruit-veg-nut-update-blog/posts/adding-sand-to-soil.aspx https://www.uaex.uada.edu/farm-ranch/crops-commercial-hortic... "If you mix sand into clay, the clay particles will fill in all the open spaces between the sand particles and often the clay will act as a ‘glue’ sticking all particles together, ultimately resulting in a more dense soil."