Melissa, I admire you, taking on a large garden with heavy clay soil. Still, even if you only dig it for new plantings, at least you will never have to go to exercise classes!
Seriously, as you are already seeing a layer of good topsoil and earthworms, it shows that all that hay etc is doing a good job. If you ever take a trip to the sea-side, don't come back without a boot load of seaweed. I have heard that it works very well on breaking up clay soil.(Wash the salt off first)
I have light, sandy, stony soil on my new garden. At least at the bottom of the slope. At the top it is bare rock or thin soil over rock. Easier to work, but not so good at holding nutrients. Daisy

The soil here is clay too but it has more organic matter. I read that clay soil is low in calcium. When I plant a rose I put Gypsum in the hole. It's supposed to lighten the clay and adds calcium. I also top dress with it(now every other year)I throw on alfalfa pellets and compost and either rice straw or leaves. I try to keep the mulch heavey. I also heard that bare soil becomes compacted with rain. Of course with clay that's the last thing we want.

Oh, Melissa, I didn't know we have gray soil in common. Mine is limey sand with spots of white clay in the front yard and white limestone rocks through it. Ugly stuff! I did it out (which, I guess, is not feasible for your big garden - and getting less feasible for my back!) I think I'll build a small retaining wall with the chunks of clay! The soil in my beds has become nice and black and fluffy with earthworms after much amending. I'm happy about that. Fortunately, I can get free composted horse manure since Ocala is the Horse Capital of the World (with proper deference to Kentucky, of course. We do have 450 horse farms in this county.) And I collected oak leaves last month from the piles at the street so I have a nice deep mulch of leaves that will offer a little more acid for the soil. I threw a lot of soil sulphur around this winter which has helped with the pH, I think.

What did the farmer fellow say about your efforts? Did you get any positive feedback from him - or just a funny look? It just shows that old garden roses are good garden plants if they will thrive in such diverse - and bad - conditions.

Sherry

I remember the first time my parents took me to see my Father's family in southern Illinois. The soil was black! Because there were some oil wells, I asked if the soil was black because the oil spilled out. When my Grandma stopped laughing, she told me about topsoil. And she let me (second grade me) dig holes with a grown up's shovel.
Well grown up me can barely dig a hole with grown up shovel in the eastern red clay to this day.

We live where people have lived European style for slightly more than 200 years. Pottery shards, broken china, mule shoes, truck tie rods...I never know what I'll find in the garden. Around our house there are other areas that were used before then. There are at least two deer paths (more like five) that cross below our hill. I find worked points for scraping deer hides, broken grinding stones and chipped stones that failed to turn into hunting implements. There's at least one burning area that the natives left behind. Not much ordinance from the minor Civil War battle that was here.

In my soils, I have the rocks left by weathering, the rocks left by the river before it down cut to its current elevation and the rocks brought in by the Native Americans. I'm a geologist so I find this really neat.

So as I dig, and try to emend my clays, I can at least keep myself amused. When the noon deer go by, I just tell them they are safe for today.

Sherry, No funny look from the young man at all: the garden grows pretty well, and he knows why we're gardening the way we are, and that we're not responsible for the clay, only for changing it. I like the clay, myself; it just needs amendment. Better it than sand any day. You're lucky to have all those amendments, though we do well with the hay. By the way, our clay is a dark gun-metal gray, not whitish.

Daisy, I was wondering what kind of soil you had. What is the underlying rock? Is it something that can decay into soil? Or will you have to terrace or resort to other methods to get a greater depth of soil? I'll be interested to hear how plants do in your garden. By the way, the "topsoil layer" is about 1/16"! We have a long way to go!

Paula, What's the chemical composition of gypsum? It sounds so unlikely to improve alkaline clay, but I know nothing about soil chemistry.

Ann, my brother was a geologist and I read a couple of his textbooks. I didn't learn much in the way of practical geology, but my reading left me with at least an appreciation of how much of a story land can tell to those able to interpret the message. I have something of that approach with language: I think about where words come from, and why; and how they've changed in meaning and form through the centuries. Language isn't opaque: you can see the strata that have made it what it is today.

Melissa

Gypsum is CaSO4 and it does work on acidic clays to decrease particle (lumps) to much smaller lumps. One of the cats was out about an hour ago, pooping, and she didn't appreciate it, but I did...the bed she went to is still reddish in clay color but she was digging in it, easily. Ten years ago, she could neither have dug in it, nor covered it. We gardeners define progress in very basic steps.

If y'all remember AmazonDoc (who gardened near me). She's moved closer to Nashville in an area that has historically been cedars barrens (no trees other than cedars and it's been a grassland that was prized by early settles (no trees to clear). Her underlying rock is a pure limestone with very little clay, so as it has weathered over millenia, there is very little clay left behind by the weathering process.
Gertrude Jekyll said something like she'd like to grow roses at her home, but she couldn't afford to have the clay brought in.

Gypsum is calcium sulfate and it is a famous soil conditioner. It can be used on alkaline soils as well.

It forms interesting crystals. In arid conditions it can form the famous "desert rose", see below.

My own soil is a sandy clay loam, about two-thirds sand and one quarter clay, with only a few percent loam. A quarter clay is actually considered a high clay content and most of the time my soil acts like clay, only with a bit better drainage from the sand. My challenge is the pH which is up around 8. Our tap water is quite alkaline, too. All of these things are improved -- some -- by compost.

Rosefolly

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:234980}}

Melissa: As one language/word freak to another - Ave!!

Rosefolly: I'm growing my roses in pots only (necessity). Our tap water seems pretty hard to me, as well as chlorinated - would coffee grounds or tea leaves help that? Or what would you suggest?

Anybody: I had a neighbor once (long before I had any garden at all) who crushed eggshells to put in the soil of her houseplants. I don't remember why, but I think it had to do with calcium. Have any of you heard of this, and is it just an old wives' tale?

Laura

In my veggie garden I was having lots of problems with tomatoes and blossom end-rot. At the garden club meeting an expert recommended calcium. So I dried the egg shells and crushed them to use when enough was accumulated. No blossom end rot last year at all! Beautiful tomatoes and I understand they require roughly the same nutrients as roses. Maybe we could try it on roses; couldn't hurt. I have clay that sounds just like Rosefolly's. The veggie plot has been amended for 40 years and when I got it almost 5 years ago, it was very clay-ish. Now, after gypsum, horse manure, compost and coffee grounds I have very soft, fertile soil. I will keep doing what I do and hope all remains well. The roses are finding their way into the veggies as I run out of room and they are loving it!

Laura, I put eggshells in my compost. Yes, it is the calcium.

As for tap water, I'm sorry to say I'm no expert. Ours is pretty alkaline but since it doesn't rain at all in the summer, we have to use it. I don't really know what can be done about it if it is a problem. Maybe use filtered water if you only have a few pots? Or buy distilled water? Perhaps someone else has an idea.

When I found out organics and chlorine don't mix, DH bought a whole house filter at Lowe's (I think about $70) and installed it between the meter and the house. We change the filter every 3 months. So now the microbes are happy, and I can drink our city water. That was nasty stuff - a new chemical flavor every day. I don't know if the filter has any effect on pH except that it would remove mineral particles. Would that help?

Sherry

I've never actually tested our soil and don't know its chemical composition through anything other than observation of how plants behave. I've grown tomatoes with great success, and many of the roses thrive grandly as long as it rains. Which makes me suspect that there's no calcium deficiency. About the Ph, whatever it is, the only way I can see to alter it is through organic amendment, and I doubt the change would be great. I just grow plants that like alkaline clay soil, and there are a lot of them, including many English-y and Mediterranean plants (peonies, clematis, roses, iris, aromatic plants, box, many viburnum). I wish I could bring a truckload of sand into the garden(not feasible), and the gypsum sounds worth trying. But mostly it's hay and more hay.

Laura: Ciao to you, too! What form does your passion for languages take?

I don't know whether it works, but in Italy gardeners say just to pour tap water into a container and let it sit for a while to eliminate the chlorine. For alkaline water, add a bit of vinegar.

Melissa

I grew up 2 counties west of where I am now in NC, on red clay soil. With enough amendment there's nothing better.

Melissa your post makes me wonder if I shouldn't put lime on my teas. I amend heavily (part of the problem now, actually), but I wonder if that changes the pH *enough* to suit the teas. The pH of the soil on my farm is low, 5 to 5.5 without amendment.

Alicia,

I don't know whether Teas actually prefer neutral to alkaline pH, or whether they just tolerate a wide range of soil pH. You could experiment with a few plants, I suppose, using a quick-acting amendment and seeing what happens.

I have a never-settled question in my mind about the relative importance of soil pH on one hand and soil texture on the other. How important is the extremely compact soil, as opposed to its pH? Here it would be illuminating to see what grows in acid, extremely heavy clay, that is, same texture but different pH. There are plants I have trouble with: not acidophiles, because I know I can't grow them; and not my alkaline clay lovers; but others with more mysterious requirements. Tea olives give me more trouble than seems reasonable, for example: half the time they live, and half the time they die. They grow fine down in the valley bottoms with their alluvial soil. On the farm they seem to like a layer of organic detritus filtered down among stones or construction debris.

If gardening were easy it wouldn't be as much fun, would it?

Melissa

I live in red soil country and have some of it in areas of my garden. But most of my soil is a sandy loam. It's great for digging since it's light, but does not hold moisture well. I have read that it's a bad idea to add clay to sandy soil or sand to clay soil. But just yesterday I found a source of some clay and added some to certain spots in my yard. I also like to add some garden soil to soiless potting soil. I think it is very helpful with roses in large pots. I think Maurizio said he adds some clay to his soil. I'd like to hear more about that.
I usually add leaf compost and sometimes horse manure but some parts of my soil are still just fluffy. Powdery when dry.
Linda

Melissa I think I will try a bit of lime. The soil that was trucked in when the house was moved has a ridiculously low pH of 4.

Although on the whole, I think the soil is too rich (not the soil that was trucked in, but what the roses were planted in, which is organic matter dumped on top of the compacted low pH soil), and the teas are having too much fast tender growth that succumbs to canker in the winter.

It's just interesting that the rugosas are fine with my soil and my garden, the species roses, the polyanthas... all but the teas. I've always thought they just needed a leaner soil and once the garden matures and the soil mellows they'll be all right, but perhaps they would like a shot of lime too.

Linda, it's a pity you and I can't mix our soils half and half: they'd be just right then. WHAT we all go through to get something that looks like dirt!

Alicia, your weather and soil are so different from mine that I have no faith in the usefulness of any suggestions I might make. I recall how Olga's roses grow like mad, and she's in the eastern U.S. as well: you folks have all that summer rain, your blessing and bane! As far as nutrition goes, I don't really know what clay offers to the plants growing in it; but it's true that my Teas thrive on a diet that is just inadequate for most of the Hybrid Teas and English roses I've tried.
It's interesting that you mention Rugosas, as they're one of the few important rose classes I haven't tried. I must admit I'm not heartbroken about not having them, but I've always suspected they would do very poorly in my conditions, and have never been tempted to experiment with them. A couple have come in as gifts from friends.

Melissa

Melissa I have read that rugosas love an acid soil, so they probably wouldn't love your farm.

If I could *get over* babying the teas, I think they could do well. lol I know they love the Southeast.

Yes, I have often drooled over Olga's roses. They are magnificent. Yours look very happy too.