Another thing you can look for to improve the organic matter of the soil is any livestock farms around you, and the manure and bedding that they have as waste. The best amendment I have is the horse manure from my farm. We bed them with sawdust, and pick the stalls twice a day during winter. Try looking around for any kind of farm, chicken and cow manure will help also. Animals eat a lot of roughage to keep their digestive systems moving, and animal digestive tracts are not that efficient, so most of the nutrients that they consume are passed back out in the manure, which is why it is so wonderful for fertilizing. Animals are essentially nutrient concentration factories for gardeners.

If you can't find any horse farms near you that are willing to part with their garden gold, you can use pure manure without any bedding in it. It would take you a while to build up organic matter, but you'd be on the right track. If you went this route you could simply add bedding to the manure and till it into the soil. We get our bedding from a local sawmill, it costs me about $150 for a huge dump truck of sawdust, and we cover the pile to keep it dry. If you've got mostly clay, then you need a massive amount of organic matter.

If you think of soil as layers of a cake, the top soil is the icing on top of the cake. The "A" Horizon as soil scientists call it. Just Google soil horizons if I'm being hard to follow, soil types and soil history is part of my job. The top 12 inches of soil is where you want your organic matter, and if you think about your garden and how large it is, estimate how much woody, leafy, cellulose you would need in order to get your soils with the Organic matter content you'd like, on the order of 10% for rounding purposes. Loamy soils weigh on the order of 80 pounds per cubic foot, and clay soils weigh closer to 100-120 pounds per cubic foot, depending on the moisture levels of the soil. A good starting point would be 10 pounds of sawdust (10% of 100 pounds/clay) per square foot of garden. If you have alkaline soils and would rather use peat (peat would lower the pH) or some other woody material, just be sure to get close to the weight you want. Gardening is less of a science and more of an art, but it's good to be in the ballpark, that way when you have to do something different down the road, you know about where you are as far as soil structure goes.

Sawdust breaks down quickly into the soil, and the bacteria that eat the cellulostic material in the wood tie up Nitrogen while they eat and break it down. Once the woody material is broken down they will release the Nitrogen back into the soil, so no worries there. Earthworms will also explode, eating and breaking down more of the amendments for you, and giving you precious worm castings.

In my case, I saw the drought coming, from the way the weather was acting in april and may, and from the "D" word being used by the farmer's almanac. I broke some new ground that had been pasture and converted it into garden, the new space is right next to the old cistern on our farm; a hand dug 25' deep tile-faced cinder block cistern. It's a marvel just to look into it, knowing what people from generations past did just to get by.

Anyway, I tilled ground there because I wanted the water source close to my plants, my other plot of garden is 500 feet away. The problem is the soil there. Here in Illinois the land was shaped by the glaciers, and the topsoil that is so rich in my main garden has washed away near the cistern, leaving very old, somewhat eroded Paleosol. My fix for the soil is being added now, I had several bales of old hay from last year that I used to mulch my pants this summer, which I will till in, and most of the manure from the horses are going to be tilled in there, along with some ammonium sulfate. The Nitrogen in the ammonium sulfate is going to speed decay and breakdown of the massive amount of organic matter that I am introducing to the soil, and the sulfur is going to lower my pH considerably, I have slightly alkaline soils.

Most compost mixes are perfect for *maintaining* a soil structure that you have built, but using everyday compost to try and get to a soil structure that gardeners like would take several years, if not a decade. Getting to 8% Organic matter is just too big a task for small amounts of soil amendments. It is a little costly, but you'll only have to do it once, and you'll be amazed at how well the soil can hold water when it has organic matter in it.

This summer, during the drought, the soils on my main garden which I have amended for the last 3 years with horse manure/bedding, was still moist 3 inches below the surface - after 2 weeks without rain.

Rhizo, it Is basic knowledge, you want soil to let water thru you have sandy soil. Correct? So add some sand to your soil and drainage will improve. What is the problem in soil structure equision?

How deep do you prepare your soil.

All these people that talk of just putting stuff on top, well, no matter what schtick one does on top of the soil, if the base is crap, it will still be crap.

Farmers normally plow down x inches for a reason.

"All these people that talk of just putting stuff on top, well, no matter what schtick one does on top of the soil, if the base is crap, it will still be crap.

Farmers normally plow down x inches for a reason."

I will limit my comment to just saying you are flat out wrong.

The soil scientists at Cornell will tell you that to make enough difference adding sand to clay soils you will need about 75 percent of that sand to mix into that clay. Soil scientists at other agricultural schools will tell you somewhere between 45 and 55 percent sand. Either way a lot of sand would be needed.
Organic matter, more readily available and much less expensive, will do more even though it does need to be replaced annually.

Farmers who have stopped annual tilling in favor of "no-till " practices enjoy greatly improved yields. That's a fact. These fields require less water and less fertilizer and suffer very little water and/or soil erosion, a huge problem with plowed fields. The added benefits of improved soil structure, aggregation, and an evolved microorganism environment can be enormous.

RPR, we shouldn't copy what "farmers" do as the ideal. Farmers can and have done extensive damage to the land with unsustainable practices. What's great is that we now have excellent soil scientists who have done extensive research that shows that no-till gardening is actually good for the soil.

TAB: This article describes why adding a little bit of sand to clay is bad. Basically, the small clay particles fill in the gaps between the larger sand particles, which makes it denser. This leaves less space between the particles and makes drainage WORSE.

"The problems occur when sand and clay are mixed in incorrect proportions. An ideal soil has 50% pore space (with the remainder consisting of minerals and organic matter). The pore spaces in a clay soil are all small, while those in a sandy soil are all large. When one mixes a sandy and a clay soil together, the large pore spaces of the sandy soil are filled with the smaller clay particles. This results in a heavier, denser soil with less total pore space than either the sandy or the clay soil alone. (A good analogy is the manufacture of concrete, which entails mixing sand with cement - a fine particle substance. The results are obvious.) A soil must consist of nearly 50% sand by total volume before it takes on the characteristics of a sandy soil. For most sites, it would be prohibitively expensive to remove half the existing soil and add an equal volume of sand and then till it to the necessary 18-24". Mineral amendments of large particle size, such as perlite, may provide some benefit but can also be costly depending on the size of the site."

Here is a link that might be useful: Entire article link

Oh god, rhizo, no. no no, no. Fact: No-tilling has about the same yields as conventional tillage, after a break in period of 3-4 years after you stop tilling.

AND when you no-till, you can't fold in amendments to the soil. Wrong on so many levels. Show us articles, where studies show all these things about sand and no-till facts.

But, there are gardeners who have stopped tilling, and add their organic matter on top of the soil as mulch, allowing worms and the rest of the soil food web to 'till' it in.

You can debate no-till farming all you like, but it's beyond the scope of the original question.

Good quote by ssmdgardener about sand. Basically you have to add a LOT to clay prevent the formation of something like concrete, which is exactly what the OP's problem seems to be already. Organic matter will get you there without the 'concrete stage'. I add silt to my clay when I can find it, too.

But for hot, dry conditions, mulch, mulch, mulch.

To be honest, everybody is taking a leap of faith in assuming the problem has been correctly diagnosed. I'm not at all convinced the little darlin's didn't drown, and the reason the water didn't sink in wasn't that the ground was saturated. I've seen that before, where people starting throwing around the D word, and other people overreact.

You make a worthwhile point. My wife asks me whether something needs water, and I tell her to stick her finger in the soil and see how damp it is. Plants don't talk, at least not out loud. :-D
Only Angel could tell us whether the water sits on top of her soil because it's dry and hard or because it's saturated underneath.

TAB3230, adding sand to improve clay soils is NOT basic knowledge.....rather, it is a common garden myth and not supported by soil science. To improve drainage and aeration in clay soils, you need to increase pore space or that empty/negative space that exists bewteen soil particles. And for that you need a textural component - something of more substance or larger particle size than sand. Even coarse sand. That textural component is organic matter, in whatever form you care to include.

Sand is only of value in altering soil texture if it is included in large enough volumes. And that starts at about 50% of the total volume. Highly impractical from both an economic and logistical aspect for most homeowners. And not necessarily equally effective even in that type of concentration - you may still wind up with adobe depending on the type of clay soil you start with.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Myth of adding sand.........

The fact is that sand will help with clay soil.
BUT you have to add 50%-75% sand & go as deep as you would like drainage. This is why most people just say sand is bad & some say sand is good. As in most things it is the amount.
Compost & mulch is the easiest way to get good drainage & hold water in the soil, from the suns heat.

To those who continually float the-- on top of the ground-- miracle fix, this person is asking about his soil, not some trick- books may say- that makes the actual ground in an area superfluous.

Jolj made a simple fact obvious-- "go as deep as you would like drainage".
This has nothing to do with putting a to z on top of the ground and wait for these track star worms to show up, to fix the lousy soil but working the soil, that exists, which is what the poster is asking.

He/she needs to dig and till, by what ever method is possible for him/her to get that base soil as rich as possible.
Plants send roods down only as far as the soil is good, that not only means texture but sonsist of minerals and such.

The new issue of "The Progressive Farmer" has an article on "Global food security" and one of the items it mentions is water worries listing how much water it takes to raise different crops.
Raised beds use MORE sater, period while doing nothing to address poor or dead soil.
The artilce towards its conslusion says: "No amount of synthetic fertilizer can bring back dead soil."
Piling so called "green mulch" on top of dead soil is just another form of synthetic fertilizer.
Without continual attention that pile will quickly decompose down to at most a few inches of dead mulch on dead soil.

The next article on "Seeds of Plenty" which addresses how technology is changing seeds, would probably cause some here to start drinking heavily.
It does say though that without healthy soil, all technology is worthless.

I am sure there is a happy medium here. I think most of us would agree that tilling gets amendments into the soil FASTER than laying them on top.

However, it's overboard in the other direction to say that organic mulches do not improve the soil, and they will only break down into 'a few inches of dead mulch'.

I used half-composted, free shredded yard waste mulch in various perennial beds around my yard for 15 years, and the soil color and texture has improved dramatically. It improved more in areas where I dug in amendments. Annual mulching has maintained the quality of both at a higher level than what I started with. I have worms where I had none.

Not only is the mulch not 'dead', it disappears almost completely, wood chips and all. I doubt it's all being carried off by birds, so a good portion of that organic matter is ending up in the soil matrix. That's my experience.

Ok tox, I'll bite.

I can say that organic mulches, if not turned into the soil, do *not* improve the profile of the soil structure.

You betray yourself when you say that you have laid your mulches on for 15 years, and claim that your soils have improved through that action alone...

When in the next sentence you admit that you take a shovel to it and see that it is more improved where you have "tilled" - which is what disturbing the soil with an implement is, even a shovel.

The action of building a thick layer of organic matter, as how the soils on midwestern prairie formed(or through simply laying compost on top each year), is a mode of action that takes thousands of years, *thousands* of years of plant growth (and root growth) with yearly winter die offs, and subsequent regrowth (or your compost-pile-up plan), the dead plant material breaking down into what became rich black prairie soil. I mention central US prairie as compared to the clay-heavy upland timber soils that lay next to it, as in the Midwest the differences between the two are the most pronounced, and I use it to illustrate the point. Prairie is the soil type that most gardeners are trying to achieve, with the O and A horizons as thick as they can be, loaded with Organic Matter.

When you compare prairie soils to soils that formed under upland timber, ie, cleared trees next to the natural drainageways that dissect the prairie, there is *much* less organic matter in the upland timber soils, and as such timber soils are much less productive. Soils that formed under upland timber did not have the benefit of huge amounts of plant material growing and dying each year, as the soil was built through leaf accumulation each fall.

While timber soils are still considered silt loam, their holding capacity for water is notably diminished. If you don't get a rain at regular intervals, your crop will be short. In short, that is what the Original Poster has to work with.

Given the above, tilling does get amendments to work in the soil faster, by a factor of centuries, not years. Your way of building up soil without tilling it is much slower to work, and if you start off with heavy clay, amending it by laying mulch on top will not penetrate the soil profile. My guess is you started with soil that isn't as poor as the OP.

I'm sorry, I'm having a twitchy moment. I'm close to the point where I've had my limit of arguments for no-tilling. It's a perfect practice to use on moderately to very sloped ground, where erosion is a significant factor. No-Tilling has applications for reducing soil compaction caused by driving equipment over the surface, and trying to limit creating a compaction layer by driving over the top 12 inches of loose tilled soil with machinery. But in a garden, no. Stop that.

The Original Poster mentioned having back problems, and being unable to really work the soil often. In that case, If it were me, without access to major tillage equipment, I would sow a green manure over the surface, like clover or rye, and seed turnips in with it. Then turn the rye into the soil in the spring. The turnips will help bust up the hard clay, and add more organic matter to the soil when you turn it under, but it *has* to be turned under. Or you can sow grass seeds to the plot and wait for ten or fifteen thousand years for nature to build up a prairie soil.

At the very least the amendments have to be dug into the heavy clay at least once to improve the structure of the soil.

{{gwi:308396}}

In many cases clay soil is what is left after silt has eroded away. In essence, the "B" horizon for grasslands (above) IS the "A" horizon when you look at heavy clay.

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This is probably a closer representation of what the Original Poster has to work with, and you must improve the entire profile in order to affect soil moisture retention to any measure of effectiveness.

Remember, we are trying to grow plants which are not suited to the soil types which we find under our feet. The plants that belong in clay are what we classify as weeds, as they are the only things hardy enough to bust through the clay to get to water.

There is also a radish variety that is just for breaking hard soil, not for eating.
It can be found in some of the catalogs that have sections just for pasture or green cover crops.

I am so pleased at the response I have gotten here!

From reading all your responses I know one of my mistakes is that I do not mulch. I will definitely be mulching next year.

If I do put organic compost on top of my soil at the end of the season and try to till it in with my small tiller can I till my perennials and expect them to come up again next year?

I would not till over perennials for fear of damaging the roots. If you really need to do wholesale tilling, you could temporarily dig them up and move them.

Chris, you're way more knowledgeable than me about soil science, so I'm not going to try to outsmart you. I will just say that I did not mean to imply that the OP (or anyone else) should just add organic matter to the top and leave it at that. I do agree organic matter should be initially tilled into poor soil. I've just read so much on this forum and elsewhere about the development of porous structure by microbes, wormholes, etc., that I'm less likely to till my clay now that it's gotten pretty rich. That's all I was trying to say.

Tox, you are 100% correct in your assertion that tillage disturbs the soil structure and microbial environments. I'm of the opinion that tillage in a garden really only needs to be performed once in a great while, to get the structure that you want, rich and full of organic matter, but after the soil is correct, surface amendments should be sufficient, but it does have to be done well and as deep as you can get. You do also have to be in the ballpark with how deep your added compost and amendments get (simply stirring up clay really doesn't do much in the long run), you want to ensure that you get organic matter even throughout the soil profile. Once organic matter is in the soil, the only thing that removes it from the soil is percolation and erosion, two actions that takes nature lifetimes to achieve on undulating to gently rolling soil.

I meant no animosity or disrespect in my previous post, and it occurs to me that my wording could have been more diplomatic.

I am an agricultural appraiser, and the only attributes farmland has is soil class and slope. I try to be as knowledgeable as possible and as often as I can not to deal in absolutes.

I second that, if you need to move your perennials, you can transplant them out and back into the same spot. You should even see more robust growth on them next year. A little bit of shock is always a healthy thing.

No worries, I think we're on the same page.

Do not till over perennials or they will become annuals.

You may till next to them.

What do you use for tilling, that is the big question.

I use a small rototiller.

So according to the information above Lasagna gardening will not work?
It also makes me wonder why farmers are wasting their money on no-till drills for planting. They only spent a few billion dollars on them in the last 10 years.
It makes me wonder how I get grass to grow waste deep in my pastures, which were used up cotton fields and void of almost all top soil and left nothing but hard clay. Darn never once stuck a plow in it, or used an ounce of commercial fertilizer. Must just be my imagination.
It makes me wonder how my roses grow in clay that has never had organic matter tilled into it. They have only been there 35 years and doing well for some unknown reason.

Right, but nova we are talking about more than just roses and cotton, both of which are hardy enough to grow in the south or poor soils. With the price of corn so high, a lot of southern farmers are trying to get corn to grow down south - with disastrous results.

As I said above, I try not to deal in absolutes. Lasagna gardening will work fine, if what you have to work with isn't concrete. However if you start off with very poor soil, you will have to fix it with proper tillage and amendments before laying it by with top-added compost and mulches. No-Till has great applications for reducing erosion and cutting down on soil compaction. However it does have it's draw backs, the soil is colder in the spring, which pushes the planting date to later in the spring, and seed emergence is slowed.

Grasses growing in pastures is not the same as trying to grow cucumbers, tomatoes, corn, beans, or watermelon, take your pick of any garden veggie and you'll see where I'm coming from. We are trying to grow food here, not ornamental plants, and the more food we can get per plant reduces the work we have to do to help them along.

If you start with a decent soil, lasagna gardening works fine. But if you have clay all the way down, you're going to have a hard time getting decent yields from what you plant.

Farmers are using no-till after how many years of plowing the soil?

Up here in Minn. back in the eighties we had dust storms in the winter, the snow drifts, the few we had, during those pathetic warm winters, were often black from farmers removing wind breaks.
Without that wind break, no-till became one way to, to a degree, deal with a problem. that is actually more severe than soil that does not get amended every year by plowing manure under.
Wind breaks do not grown back in a year.

No till has it place. To use it on bad soil is simply pointless till the soil had been made usable.

I grow roses on black-gumbo, so hard I could take a wet chunk and injure someone by throwing at him.
If you are growing roses and not doing anything to them, you are either a miracle worker or not telling the truth.
I have been growing them for decades and my mother for fifty years before me.
Roses, unless you have simple shrub roses, of which some varieties grow wild in parts of Minn. ARE WORK. (I could take anyone for ride around my home town and show them roses growing next to the dirt roads in the country.---------

Angel:
How deep do your tines till.
With my front-tine tiller, I can take it down six inches easily.

1. There is no reason to till a garden that contains perennials. that can simply destroy the perennials.
2. Any soils ability to accept and hold adequate moisture depends on many factors and then whether the plants can get that moisture is another whole set of differences.
Organic matter in sandy soils will increase that soils ability to hold moisture in the plants root zone.
Organic matter in clay soils will open up the pore spaces so the moisture can move around better and the plant roots can actually get some of it.
Organic matter in any soils makes it much better soil.
These simple soil tests may be of some use,
1) Structure. From that soil sample put enough of the rest to make a 4 inch level in a clear 1 quart jar, with a tight fitting lid. Fill that jar with water and replace the lid, tightly. Shake the jar vigorously and then let it stand for 24 hours. Your soil will settle out according to soil particle size and weight. A good loam will have about 1-3/4 inch (about 45%) of sand on the bottom. about 1 inch (about 25%) of silt next, about 1 inch (25%) of clay above that, and about 1/4 inch (about 5%) of organic matter on the top.

2) Drainage. Dig a hole 1 foot square and 1 foot deep and fill that with water. After that water drains away refill the hole with more water and time how long it takes that to drain away. Anything less than 2 hours and your soil drains� too quickly and needs more organic matter to slow that drainage down. Anything over 6 hours and the soil drains too slowly and needs lots of organic matter to speed it up.

3) Tilth. Take a handful of your slightly damp soil and squeeze it tightly. When the pressure is released the soil should hold together in that clump, but when poked with a finger that clump should fall apart.

4) Smell. What does your soil smell like? A pleasant, rich earthy odor? Putrid, offensive, repugnant odor? The more organic matter in your soil the more active the soil bacteria will be and the nicer your soil will smell.

5) Life. How many earthworms per shovel full were there? 5 or more indicates a pretty healthy soil. Fewer than 5, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, indicates a soil that is not healthy.

Yes roses grow in clay and so do many other plants that I have in the flower beds. And my clay soil does get like concrete. The plant should fit the environment. Amendments placed on top of the clay soil will be puled down into the clay soil within a year by the life within the the clay if the clay is kept moist. Organics turned over into the clay soil will be eaten up very rapidly within the soil. There is a rapid response as to benefit to the plant. This response is short lived and must be repeated often. If it is not continually replaced the clay will go back to it's original compacted state.
On the other hand if you plant directly in the clay where there has been a good continual growth of other plants there is already a network in place that lends itself to creating a good rizophere for planting. In a vegetable garden this is called a cover crop where planting seed is strip tilled for planting.
I am in no way saying your way is wrong. What I am saying is there is more than one way that works. I just do it with a lot less work and get the same results.
Farmers are using no til because they finally figured all their top soil eroded away. Farmers are using no til because it is more economical. Farmers are using no til because it works. Farmers are no longer being illiterate. They are having to become much more scientific. At least the ones that figured out they don't have to do it just because grandpa did.
By the way I was plowing ground for the first time in 1952. Planting a lot more than cotton and corn. The farm made a living in black clay. I just never quit learning.

Piling the organic matter on top without tilling works, just over a longer period of time. Go into any patch of old-growth forest, and scoop up a handful of soil. Notice the rich, black color, crumbly texture, and pleasant, earthy smell. Nobody ran rototillers through the woods and prairies in the thousands of years before people came along and decided they could do better...

Wait for some of the "pros" to come on and post. They may say- why fix the soil, you can just buy new soil! ;)

That was clearly just a joke there, thinking about another topic that some were recommending buying soil. Yea great advice in an organic forum?!?! ;)

Anyway, I just want to ensure that the no-till method works better in warmer climates.

But I am sure it was said already, taking dead leaves and spreading them over an area will turn that area into great soil.

So buying a few bags of topsoil is somehow not 'organic'? How is that? What if I haul them on my bike? :-]

This is not really an 'organic' forum anyway. It's a soil, compost and mulch forum. If you mean 'environmental footprint', I agree with you, it's better to improve what you have with compost, and I for one always suggest that first when someone asks.

If one had a small area and had really bad native soil, and wanted to start a garnden right then and there, then getting top soil from somewhere else would be needed. Yes this is not a organic forum ;) I just may have pretty good native soil, but after seeing what one year of dead leaves did to an area, I would never buy soil again! :)

"it's better to improve what you have with compost, and I for one always suggest that first when someone asks."

I agree all the way.

"it's better to improve what you have with compost"
This is the same thing I found-

The praire, which had good soil messured in feet not inches, had millions of Bison deficating, urinating and trampling said same into the ground over a period of thousands of years.

In areas of the planet that has Woods Bison, said same manicured that forested soil.
No matter how one views the age of the Earth, it is a simple fact that at past points of time, far more types of bovine mammals, most now extinct, wandered the plantet.

If you ever hunted an area that was pasture for decades the heavy growth of plants, including volunteer trees that once the area is no longer pasture will/can quickly make it into a brush forest, shows how effective and quick this process can be due only to the fact the bovines were there and deposited fertilizer while working the ground with there hoofs, especially in wet weather.

It seems that some think one can duplicate this by just throwing some leaves or mulch on top of any type of soil and suddenly -POOF- out will pop magically good deep soil that is as good as any natural process and better than any over the counter soil.

"It seems that some think one can duplicate this by just throwing some leaves or mulch on top of any type of soil and suddenly -POOF- out will pop magically good deep soil that is as good as any natural process and better than any over the counter soil."

Had an area that was hard native clay/ loam like soil. I placed leaves over the area, ONE year later the area was so soft and fertile, I could just let the shovel fall an from just the weight of the shovel, it stuck right in the soil. The soil right next to it that did not have leaves for only ONE year was hard and not workable.

RpR,

Have you ever tryed this? The proof is in the experience...

Angel54, All of these suggestions and recommendations from us here are geared towards trying to help advise you how to improve your gardening experience. We read your initial post and follow up posts as "Worst.. Soil... EVER!" and gave advice accordingly.

While there has been a back and forth discussion, the big things to take away from this whole huge post is this: With clay soils, you essentially have a very hard soil which retains water too well, to the point where it is hard to rehydrate when it is dry, and impossible to drain when it is already wet. Farmers have the same problems when they try and grow crops in silty *clay* loam, as soon as they work clay soils they dry out, and as soon as they plant, the spring rains make the soil too soggy, waterlogging the roots of the plants.

Plants can't grow roots down through sopping wet dirt, so the roots essentially are on hold until it dries a bit. But when the clay soils DO finally dry out, it's June, and the rains are much less frequent. So what you have with clay soils are soils that won't dry in the spring, leading to stunted root growth - and those more shallow roots aren't deep enough to reach water when the soils are dry during the summer, leading to plants that will wilt in the middle of the day, even if you water every day. In cases like that, you simply can't pump enough water onto the soils to do any good.

Deeper into the soil profile, all soils will retain water 2 to 3 weeks after a decent rain. It may not be much moisture, but it is sufficient for your plants to produce during hot summer days.

The "fix" for that kind of heavy, thick, clay soil is to add some texture and depth to the soil. Think of organic matter as sphagnum peat moss, woody, earthy, light, and airy material. Even when organic matter is wet, it is arable, and oxygen can pass through, almost like the consistency of a sponge.

The deeper that you can mix organic matter into the soil, the better it will retain moisture throughout the growing season and the deeper your roots will grow.

So you can do any of the above, and the harder you try, the more you will be rewarded. If you can find a farmer or a gardening hobbyist like you who has some serious tools, then you can fix all your problems this fall in one shot, and you will have a garden with perfect soil for life. If you want to try mulching and adding compost to the top and in the top 6 inches, you will see somewhat better production and moisture retention in your soils next year. Most of us are crazy gardeners, and we like doing everything big and bold, so we offer the biggest and best solutions first. This is also the same rationale behind our quest for the biggest tomato and best tasting pickles :)

One final note, if you mix organic matter into the top 6 inches, the soil under it will still be clay - so you will have excellent moisture retention and impressive root growth in the top 6 inches, but if you check your plant roots' growth, you will see that they will almost stop growing once they hit the clay. That will work fine, but it will require more watering during the summer.

At the risk of being criticized, I suggest trying mycorrhizal fungi. It can improve drainage and moisture availability for the plant. It will also help make much better use of all that organic matter added to the soil. It has helped my plants in high pI expansive clay that had very little to no topsoil when I first put in the beds.

Mastergardener:
I have hard, hard black gumbo clay.
-------------------
loam
noun
1.
a rich, friable soil containing a relatively equal mixture of sand and silt and a somewhat smaller proportion of clay
---------------
Hard clay is in no way related to loam, period.
It would seem you have never had true hard clay to deal with, whether it is rich or not.

Your method will work no magic, period, on true hard clay and a raised bed does nothing to address the original soil, period.

My soil is hard, rich but hard, if I put leaves on it all I have is a wet mess that makes the soil globby and slimy if I do not take the leaves off and compost them before working them in, while removing the leaves left on the soil makes the soil wetter and harder to work till it dries some what.

Up north I have another garden that is sandy clay and it is easy to work in a more wet stage than the black gumbo but putting leaves on it does nothing except keep it wet. It does not make it easier to work but unlike the true black gumbo clay, it will not get globby and slimy hard to work if I incorporate the leaves without composting.
I just have to clear the tiller more often where the leaves were too thick.

Their is NO true hard clay soil that magically suddnely gets easy to work just by putting leaves on it. You do not have true hard clay.

Nova:

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Colonization of barren soil

Plants grown in sterile soils and growth media often perform poorly without the addition of spores or hyphae of mycorrhizal fungi to colonise the plant roots and aid in the uptake of soil mineral nutrients.[18] The absence of mycorrhizal fungi can also slow plant growth in early succession or on degraded landscapes.[19] The introduction of alien mycorrhizal plants to nutrient-deficient ecosystems puts indigenous non-mycorrhizal plants at a competitive disadvantage.
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If this is true why would anyone criticize.

"If this is true why would anyone criticize."
The statement is true, but people criticize only because they are either ignorant as to the benefits or because they beleive the fungus already exists naturally in all soil. There are various other reasons that I beleive some people have that stem because of the commercialization of the fungi.
Often hard clay soils have all the ingredients necessary for plant growth. Although theses elements are there they are unavailable to the plant. Mycorrhizal fungi can extract these nutrients and feed the plant. They other thing is that the fungi produces gomulin that aids in aggregation of the clay soil. This aggregation makes the clay soil drain better and be more aerated that the previously compacted anaerobic clay.
There are also other ways of dealing with the hard clay and not have to constantly turn it with deep tillage. The use of cover crops has long been used in agriculture to improve soil. In the case where annuals will be planted annual rye could be planted during the off season. The roots of the annual can penetrate the clay up to 6'. In the spring the tops are turned back into the soil or go to the compost pile. What is left is the root system leaving passage ways for moisture penetration. Of course this process is no overnight miracle.
The comparison of the process in nature building top soil and taking millions of years I find very interesting but is not at all comparable to the flower bed or modern day farming. The fact that we add organics to the top of the bed vs growing something and returning it to where it was grown is not near the same. By adding the organics to the top we not only add nutrients but we do not destroy the microbial system below. The bonus is that we are also providing mulch at the top to help conserve moisture.
When deep tillage is used the soil or clay is aerated and the organic matter is mixed into the soil. This makes the organic matter decompose very fast. Initially the plants thrive and one sees an immediate result. Unfortunately this is just temporary and must be repeated often. There is also a down side. Much of the natural fungi and bacteria can be permanently destroyed. The natural pathways for moisture movement are now gone. What take millions of years in nature can be shortened to just a few years when we are in control of what is happening. Either way works it just depends on how hard you want to work or how much time you have.

Hey, I have a novel Idea, Nova and Master, can you and RpR debate politics next? That'd be A+.

Chris CL,

I would, but.....I have a better idea, can you write another long post that over complicates farming?

I am just joking.

I agree with you all the way- No-till farming is WAY less productive then conventional till methods.

TMG, just so we can grasp the level of your expertise on the matter, how many acres is the farm you own or work on?

Lloyd

Lloyd,

.0068870523415978 acres.

okay, thanks.

Thats 300 sqft. :)

Ya, I did the math.

Does anything even grow in zone 2b? jk

A friend of mine lives in zone1!!! Up in AK.

He Grows Potatoes!! Enough for the winter. :)

The farmer next to us got some of the best yeilds in the area - He does no-till. In our decently moist climate (40 inches plus, most years - NOT this year!), plant material breaks down fairly fast, so there's really no need to till or dig in matter.

Also, the animals that do the planting around here are squirrels and ants... at least in the woods. Worms generally incorporate the organic matter. The top 6-12 inches of soil anywhere around here is usually loose and friable, so I guess I can't say much about heavy clay - We do have some gravelly clay soil, but the key is to work it when the conditions are just right. The wrong soil moisture, and tilling causes the soil to turn to railroad ballast, or fine chalk. Then it rains, and the stuff hardens to concrete. But, that's not everywhere around here. We have mostly beech-maple forest, with fairly rich, loamy soil in most spots.

First I applaud everyone here for being informative, polite, and speak for oneself, rather than attacking others like some other forums. I appreciate Chris_CL's info. on how to improve soil with horse manure.

I love what Jimbobfeeny wrote before "Piling the organic matter on top without tilling works, just over a longer period of time... Nobody ran rototillers through the woods and prairies in the thousands of years before people came along and decided they could do better..." That is so true!

Speaking from my own experience only:

1) Last year I rototilled horse manure into clay soil, then planted roses. The soil was nice and fluffy, but roses got badly burnt (brown spots), so I spent the entire day replacing the soil.

2) This year I came back to where I dumped the horse manure mixed with clay. What once was fluffy mixture became HARD AS ROCK! I had to use a pick ax to break huge clumps apart. The horse manure decomposed and glued tight to clay.

3) I expanded a bed bordered with bricks. 12 years ago I put coarse sand under the bricks. The coarse sand hasn't decomposed, and the soil there is nice and fluffy. Play sand is fine particles which will glue, but coarse sand has tiny pebbles which won't break down.

4) Last year I mixed peat moss (fine particles), alfalfa meal (fine particles) with clay soil. It was nice and fluffy. I planted my rose. This year I dug up the rose since it wasn't growing. I found its root enclosed in "concrete-slab" of hardened clay.

5) Finally I simulate what roses in container come with: pine bark mixed with potting soil. I fluffed up the surface layer of my clay with pine mulch. Pine mulch has acidic tannin, which conditions my alkaline clay. It is large-particle, which takes longer to break down. Six months later I dug up the spot, it's still fluffy. The final test is 12 years later, will the lagsana method glue up? Not so in forest after centuries of decayed organic matter.

It depends on your soil. If your soil is high in magnesium alkaline clay like mine - it will act as "instant glue" to glue particles together, esp. fine one. If your soil is sandy, then rototilling amendmends is great.