My question is how do I best prepare lousy soil to plant a tree? I ordered a small tree online that will be shipped in the fall when it's dormant, about 4 weeks from now. The soil is a sickening yellow clay subsoil with some wood chips mixed in. A 50 year old magnolia bit the dust and it was cut down and the stump grinded. The tree had been in an island in the lawn mulched with wood chips. Trouble is, I wasn't able to remove the chips when the contractor came to grind the stump and all those chips got mixed into the soil.

I removed several wheelbarrows full of the top layers of soil with chips and roots and raked out as many as I can. So far, I threw in some free alpaca manure I obtained, a bit of compost, lime and topsoil and mixed it into that horrible clay. Is that enough prep for the soil? I'd put more compost in but what I have isn't finished. It's mostly some lawn clippings, kitchen scraps, and small amounts of leaves and brown paper. Should I mix it in to counter some of the woodchips? Sorry, I should have mentioned, I'm planning to put the new tree about 3 feet from where the old trunk was.