Joyce, the biggest difference between hay and straw will be the amount of seeds they will bring into your garden...straw will be cleaner.

While the addition of some peat as part of your amendments will benefit your clay soil, what would help most in improving soil structure, aeration, drainage would be compost, and lots of it. Do you have a source for finished compost? Save the vermiculite for amending container soils, you want aged manures, aged plant remains to improve your garden soil.

And to add to morz8 comments, vermiculite loses its structure in a very short time, and would cease to provide porosity to the soil in a very short time.

I'll suggest that you look for bags of pine bark fines, often sold as soil conditioner in the big box stores. Smaller than pine bark nuggets.

You might consider making the grade changes you need to so that this area is no longer a wet spot.

Thanks Ya'll,
Update...I have a few days reprieve on getting amendments ready, as Dale (Mr. Till) called with an axle problem on the tractor, 1st till will be Tuesday. Anyway,for morz8...I've not yet checked with the farmer that works at Ace, but a fellow employee told me that he's pretty sure it's untreated straw, but at 4 bucks a bale, that's pretty much out. As far as finished compost, could you give an example of finding sources of something other than the 40 lb bags at WalMart's garden center? There're bags of humus, cow manure and the like here in town. Is that what you mean, or are you getting at having a guy with a truckfull to dump? I'm all for that, if it's common, and if so, what do I look for? And the vermiculite, yeah, I'm with ya. Bought a small bag today, I realize it's not a garden-plot amendment, I'm using it for indoor stuff, seed starting and rooting and whatnot.
Rhizo, I'll look into the pine suggestions, 1st I think I need to check my soil ph level. I bought a home tester today (fill soil to level, add water, add contents of capsule...good for 10 testings). I heard that pine products are good depending on one's ph situation. And as for the puddly spots, they're not in the intended plot areas, I just mentioned them to exemplify (right word?) my clay situation. I did speak with Dale (tiller) about them and he had some ideas, and I had thought of just planting some tropical perennials in those areas.
Thanks so much for the ideas, folks. I'm sure I'll have more to ask in the very near future.
Joyce

Pine bark fines won't alter the pH in any meaningful way. They make a great amendment for all kinds of soil.

I assume that the soil tester you purchased tells you to use distilled water.

rhizo, yes it did, and I did buy a gallon of distilled. It rained today (should've done the test yesterday, I was busy) and I've heard that rainwater can be acidic, so I think I need to wait until it's drained a bit before testing.
I've just now come across a method of planting cover crops that will raise nitrogen levels, increase biomass and overall amend soil (such as sweet clover, crimson clover, hairy vetch and some cereal crops). When done correctly it can be used as a living mulch, one can just plant vegetables directly into the crop, it supresses weeds, the roots reach deep and bring nutrients to the surface. I'm having trouble finding an article that's appropriate for the home gardener, as the ones I'm finding are geared more towards the farmer. Can anyone point me towards one that is more effective for my immediate situation...a link, or even a thread on the forum that addresses this?
Thanks,
Joyce

The process is the same regardless of the size of the plot. The is about 43,300 sq ft in an acre so divide that by your sq ft into that number and you will know how to proceed.

Joyce, I hope you're still reading these posts. I had to make a big adjustment when I moved from coastal La. to northeast MS. Here we have clay. I have learned to live with it. It has advantages like nutrients and holds moisture. I definitely would not till the soil when it is wet. I don't know if this is a moot point becoz you might have already tilled it, but if the soil is wet and feels like you could make pottery with it on a potter's wheel, then it will just clump and the soil structure will be all messed up. I actually don't till and prefer raised beds, I don't use an enclosed border but just make a sort of hill or mound for the raised beds. For veggies you could make some sort of enclosure from non-treated wood, or bricks or cinder blocks. If you want to plant into clay, once the soil dries a little but is nice and crumbly, that is the time to plant. If the clay soil is very dry it is like cement and you will literally need a pickaxe to work it. I always try to plant a few days after a rain,if I am planting something. The raised beds don't have to worry about that, becoz I use compost (bagged compost, humus, or composted manure from any store, 40 lb bags), also get as many bags of fall leaves as you can, I run them thru a shredder, they are the most awesome soil amendment. Anyway, I have been pretty successful with lasagna gardening methods and building the beds up with above mentioned organic ingredients (I make compost myself, 3 bins going). I also use alot of mulch, either the shredded pine bark, not the nuggets, or pine straw or grass clippings or shredded leaves. Sometimes your county has free compost or mulch, have you checked with your county or city hall? Since you are doing some good internet searches I assume (cover crops) you might want to read about no-till gardening as there is a whole school of thought about not tilling. and there is Ruth Stout to read about who is very into mulching with straw I think, but any organic would work. Good luck. In my experience it took 3 years to get my yard and gardens pretty much where I want them to be with alot of trial and error and of course a garden is never finished! Laurie

Thanks everyone,
Petzold,the problem is that I can't FIND a process, at least one that's step by step for lil' ol' me, right now, for my back yard. Most of the sites I see talk to me like I'm a farmer that already knows what they're talking about. Maybe if I till what I plan to plant in (I'm assuming I have to till at least once to get the cover crops in), then use cover crops in the rows? Does that sound like a start? It's driving me batty.
Louisianagal, my clay is dark brown/gray, but it has MANY earthworms in each scoop, I assume that's good. I only did tomatoes last year, and they didn't do too well, but that could be from a number of different problems not related to my clay. I just didn't want to have lots of problems with several things I wanted to raise this year. My thinking is that the density of the soil will prohibit healthy root growth. And, yes, I did read about no-till, that's where I found the cover crop stuff, I just am not sure what to start with at this stage of the game. Even if I don't do cover crops, I plan to till in several bags of humus, manure peat moss, mowed leaves, etc. I like your idea of just throwing all those bags of amendments on top of your soil and growing in the mix. As a matter of fact, that sounds like something that may work for me. How high is your pile once it's ready to plant? Can everything be covered up with black plastic in the fall to break down over winter? I think I read somewhere that it's acceptable. I mean black plastic, not the breathable weed suppressor that lets water through. If it needs to breath, I have a garden weasle I can run over it to put holes for air.
I'm rambling now, I'll stop.
Thanks,
Joyce

Go to 'organicgardening.com' for the info you are looking for.

Well, I would say maybe 12 inches high. My understanding from looking at raised bed kits is that about 6 inches is needed for lettuce and herbs and maybe small peppers, and 12 inches is needed for tomatoes, potatoes and larger eggplants etc. I don't see why you couldn't use black plastic, but I just let mine weather uncovered so it gets rain and sun to break down. There is a way to "solarize" the area to kill weed seeds but I don't know exactly how and have never done that, and possibly it used clear plastic to heat up the stuff underneath. I wish you well, my experience with gardening is many successes and joys but also hardship, sadness and failures along the way. If it's in your blood, like mine, you'll keep on trying new things, reading, learning, and you'll have mostly successes. My next thing to try is a raised bed kit that is 4x8 feet, one half is six inches and the other half is 12 inches. I will fill it lasagna style over newspaper and cardboard to kill the grass underneath, pile on organic matter and compost and probalby add some bagged humus and plant a fall crop if it's ready and definitely it will be ready in spring. It will be in my side yard and will be my first dedicated veggie garden. Currently I just plant in with my ornamentals and cottage gardens.
Laurie

Well, Louisianagal, you've inspired me. I've decided I'm not going to till, and I made a spectacle of myself at WalMart last night, pointing to "one of that" and "two of those, please, thanks" to the poor scrawny garden center greeter who had to carry six 40 lb. bags-o-stuff to my car. I wish there had been room in the car to carry him home to help me get them out. Anyway, I have 2 bags topsoil, 2 bags organic humus, one bag organic compost, 2 bales of 2 cubit ft. sphagnum peat moss, almost 3 bags of MiracleGro garden soil (bought when I thought I would till), more than half a bale-o-straw, lotsa newspapers and am going out now for more straw and cardboard. Whew! Worked up a sweat just TYPING it.
Now another question (yes, really). My tomato seedlings are just at 6" and under, and I have 23 of them (Burpee heirloom rainbow variety pack, 6 different kinds, all indeterminate, I think). It'll be quite a while yet before I need to transplant, so if I start layering NOW, will my garden be ready to recieve the plants in 2 or 3 weeks? Will 12" of layers be enough, considering that, at transplanting time, it will have gone down? My thinking is that after 2 weeks or so, the bottom layer (cardboard and/or newspaper) should be sufficiently broken down enough to allow me to 1) dig past it into the native lawn, dump a trowel full of humus or compost, drop peat pot, then re-cover with my layers and mulch (I bought a little bulb planter tool this week for that very reason); or 2) if the layers are deep enough to NOT need to dig through the cardboard, the growing roots will break through the cardboard and thrive in the soil underneath. As I stated before, I have LOADS of earthworms, so I imagine they'd do ok, and my sweet corn seedlings(which I started inside in peat pots) were set directly into holes I had dug into my sod, with only a bit of mushroom compost in the hole and covered with wet newspaper and straw, and they're doing great...I haven't even top dressed them since I put them in about 3 weeks ago. I'm having to deal with the surrounding grass poking up around the hole, as I did not smother heavily enough, I'm correcting that now. In the same plot, several holes-in-the-ground to the north, bush beans, same story...looking good, but I'm trying to clear and smother.
Dang me and my rambling. Sorry. Oh, and one other thing (yeah, I do that, I know). I just read on another site (or this one) someone's comment about the bottom layer of a lasagna garden...poster said that cardboard breaks down better than newspaper, "according to those who lasagna garden". Has anyone heard that? I haven't.
TWO other things (I lied). When my layering's done, I plan to cover with black plastic (the kind found in the paint supplies department, not breathable), as I heard that it will "bake the lasagna", so to speak, to speed up breakdown. Any thoughts, anyone? I'll remove the plastic before planting. If air supression is deemed a problem, I can run my garden weasle over it for holes. I'd appreciate any and all opinions.
Louisianagal, if you're reading this, I would like to hear of the arbor your hubby made for you.
Thanks for letting me run on (and on, and on...)
Joyce

P.S. .... (just kidding...)

You might want to look at the Square Foot Gardening forum for ideas, too.

With what you brought home from the store (oh, that poor little scrawny greeter!!!) you probably don't need to wait for layers to break down, as most of it sounds to be in planting-ready state.

You could mix the soil and the compost together to make a richer brew for planting those tomatoes into.

I'm trying to visualise the sphagnum: black, soft, fluffy, old peat? Brown with twiggy bits in? Long-strand and pale brown like you'd use for planting up a hanging basket? Chopped?

If it's either of the first two you can mix it with your soil/compost to improve its water-holding for over summer. Just know that if it dries out it is soooooo hard to rewet. (If you plan to grow blueberries in the slow to drain patches, well, all right. Add more peat. Otherwise, frugal could be better.)

It sounds that whoever had the garden before you fed the soil well. If you keep on doing that, particularly in combination with raised beds, then you might only need Mr Tiller if you want to grow a big crop of potatoes or corn or lots of pumpkins.

It can be the case that if you add fresh leafy material to a clay soil then it can cause a TEMPORARY toxic state for young roots. If you dig in a cover crop of rye or lupin, mustard or vetch - allow at least four weeks before you sow seed or put in transplants, even if you hit it with the weed whacker and let the greenery wilt before you dig it in. (Don't let it get past the first flowers stage otherwise the stems become fibrous and it takes a lot longer to rot.)

Thank you, Vetivert...
The peat moss is as the 2nd one there, brown/slightly twiggy, kinka crumbly, not long and strandy. It's packed tightly, brick style, into a 2 cubic ft bale, like some coffee you can buy, hard as a rock until you open it...vaccuum packed, I believe. And yes, I've seen the way it kinda floats on water when you try to moisten it.
Please explain what you mean in that last paragraph, about fresh leafies causing a temp toxic state. I had not seen enough material online for me to fully understand the "living mulch" or "green manure" theory. Is that what you're talking about, digging small holes in the bed of cover and placing seeds or seedlings? Maybe the term "living mulch" had me confused, I thought that some covers would only grow to a certain height, then stop, allowing me to carve out some rows amidst the cover and use the rest for walking paths. I did see several instances of killing the cover by rolling or crimping, and thought that it didn't fall under the category of living mulch since the goal was to kill it. I could greatly use more detail, especially now, as I'm still planning these beds. Do you have a link, a covercropsfordummies.com or something?
Now, tomatoes (AAHHH, TOMATOES!!!) Ace Hardware here in town had their clearance sale on plants yesterday, and I couldn't just walk away from that last Mr. Stripey they had. 27 plants isn't enough, I had to have 28. Anyway, it's quite large already, with a few green blossom buds up top. I think I'll just dig a hole for that big baby and dump in some peat and compost or humus, then lasagna around it, bringing layers up to cover most of the stem.
By the way, what's the difference between compost and humus? I bought 2 bags of the humus (less than a buck 40 a bag) and opened it yesterday and it had the consistency of moist poop. Hardly easy to scatter it around to make a layer for the bed. How beneficial is it? Should I forego buying any more bags in favor of the more expensive (not by much) compost?

Thanks,
Joyce

BTW...I started my 1st bed yesterday. It's about 3'by 5', around 5" high, and looks like a small grave. Kinda creepy looking.