I have clay soil I would like to amend. I have always been someone who would not allow plant waste to be put in the trash. I never used a compost pile but I would throw scrapes into tall grass and always let lawn cutting and leaves be mulched into the soil. In bare spots my soil resembles and has the texture of cooled lava. When dry it is hard and dead.

A few years ago I started to read about organics and compost/mulch for soil amendment. Everything I read about talked about how great they were for the soil and I became very interested in trying it. A year ago I bought a 6" chipper to make mulch from brush and trees I would normally have burned. I mixed some of those chips with cattle manure and fresh green plant trimming, grass and weeds, to make compost. I planted many plants and trees applying a 2" layer of aged cattle manure and dried Bermuda grass cuttings in a 2Â to 6Â circle around the plant, depending on the plant, and topped everything off with 3" of chipped cedar or hardwood chips.

We had a very wet spring and early summer. All the plants did great. When things finally dried up, a few of my blackberry plants and one pecan tree died. They were planted 9 months ago using the above method. I dug into the mulch and to my amazement, found rock hard red clay soil. Nothing had changed. The manure hadnÂt even stained the color of the soil. After 9 months and all the amendments I appliedI was expecting somewhat better soil.

I realize now change will be very slow. IÂll probably need to disk mulch and compost into the soil, but even then I can only work it in 6" or so. IÂll have to make MUCH more chips and compost too.

My question is, did I do anything wrong?

TIA, mark