Where in the world are you?

Add a lot of organic material to that clay. Any "topsoil" you might find around you will be clay and organic matter anyway, and you can make topsoil. You can do that by growing a cover/green manure crop, tilling in the leaves from deciduous trees, making compost and tilling that in, or covering the soil with wood chips, anything to add organic material to the soil. One problem with wood chips is that it can take many years for improvement of the soil to be seen. wood chips are one slow means of soil improvement, but it does work.

Perhaps this article might be of some interest. http://www.ncagr.gov/agronomi/pdffiles/sfn14.pdf

kimmq is kimmsr

This is how I've built garden beds in my clay. This fall you could till in some compost in the area you want to garden, then build a compost pile with fall leaves and whatever else you can find, on top of it. Spread it out to cover the entire area and make it as thick as you can. By spring you can rake off what's not broken down and plant in the remainder. Start small, don't try to do an entire large garden at once - you will be better off with a small garden with good soil the first year than a large garden with poor soil. Clay takes time so add that compost one way or the other every year. Avoid tilling when it's wet.

Search this forum for 'clay' and you'll find some lengthy discussions on this.

About two-and-a-half years ago I also moved into a new house on an essentially bare lot with hard clay soil. Once we knew we were going to have the house built, I had saved some bags of leaves from my neighbors. After moving in, I marked out the garden bed locations and started spreading ground leaves over those areas. Our first fall and winter in the house I collected maybe 500 bags of leaves from neighbors, all of which I ground up and piled on my garden bed locations. Although I know it locks up some nitrogen, I stirred in some of the leaves deep into the soil (which was much looser after sitting under those leaves for a while). I did the same the second fall and winter. Even after such a short time, I can go out into my garden and easily dig down at least a foot with just my hands. It's not all perfect yet, but by the time I get to year five I'm thinking it will be completely awesome. Once I believed I was getting enough organic matter into the garden beds, I started grinding leaves and spreading them very thinly on lawn areas, something I've already done multiple times, and I believe I am seeing the soil being improved in the lawn as well now, though it will take much longer since I want to avoid killing the grass.

I just moved around a pile of rotting grass clippings today that I had planned to use for mulch but then got delayed, and under the pile I found quite a few soil worms, tunnels, and a bunch of castings the same weird orange-red of the clay here.

Set up food and shelter and give it time, and the life will move back in.

Good point Jon - what we left out of the above recommendations is that the blanket of compostables draws worms and microbes who will not only digest that material into the soil, but also physically fluff it in the process.

New to worms.... Can I just add to a pile of wet leaves or mulch some red wigglers etc sold as fish bait?

Red wigglers or European nightcrawlers (the latter sometimes sold as "super reds") are surface worms; they live in decaying organic material and don't dig much. If you're planning to keep a thick layer of damp mulch down, they might eat it down and fertilize with their castings. They're unlikely to do much tilling and aerating for you. If you have digging worms in your soil already, the decomposing mulch should attract them to the area, as it keeps the soil moist and cool, and provides food. If you don't have digging worms in your soil already, find a patch of healthy soil that you're allowed to dig in near home, and dig some up. Local worms are the most likely to thrive under local conditions.

Perhaps this article might be of some help, shep.

http://extension.psu.edu/plants/crops/soil-management/soil-quality/earthworms

kimmq is kimmsr

about 17 years ago, in my previous home, I had to fill a large low spot which had standing water after each significant downpour. I started with wood chips but soon realized that I needed a different approach. I ended up getting 140 cubic yards of excavation dirt which I layered over the wood chips. The fill was a success but vegetating it was not. The grass was scarce and six years later I could dig a hole and find uncomposted chips under the clay. I could not use cover crops due to extreme deer pressure.

With what I know now and given less deer pressure I would use daikon radish for injecting OM into the soil. It is truly a miracle plant, injecting enormous amounts of biomass well below one foot depth. Amadioranch has pics of his corn fields in Arizona, winter-seeded with daikon, that are amazing. From dead Arizona clay to good soil in six months.

Favas are also indicated for heavy soil breaking, nitrogen, and large surface biomass. You can do a course of favas, seeded in March in Michigan, and cut in early July when they are about 3 ft tall, followed immediately by seeding daikon, which will winter kill five months later. Both are very robust plants, germinate quickly, I even eat them both. Favas are best inoculated.

Sounds great. I might try that on my clay. However I'm trying to imagine starting seeds of anything in the hot dry July conditions in MO, where it gets so hot in the summer that you can see a fire hydrant chasing a dog down the street.

Daikon is very good at germinating in hot soil. I have moved to winter vegetables that I can germinate in the soil, because I don't like to fumble with seedlings and pots in July and August, and daikon is the best (I also do radicchio, chicory, turnip, and bekana). One good rain and it is off to the races.

What I've found to be helpful in improving the clay soil here was to stop tilling and to start adding as much OMas possible. The worms incorporate the material and till the soil for me.

I'm thinking if you can build up enough finished (or close enough) compost and organic mulch in place, you can probably be more patient about waiting for life-powered soil improvement. You could just plant directly into the compost, and let the plants gain their foothold there. The microherd will be slowly but tirelessly munching and digging away as long as conditions keep them wanting to live there, and the roots should punch through into the soil when they get big and strong enough. You get some color and/or yield to keep you satisfied, and the soil food web gets some leaving alone to do its work in peace. Time handles the rest.

About ants serving as self-propelled tillers: today I retired the garden plot we forced into usefulness with hard labor for last season. The clay had been hard and concrete-like. While I was spreading out the materials I'm mulching with, I accidentally stepped where an ant colony had been before I flooded it out. My foot sank in past the ankle before there was any real resistance. Fortunately the ants are gone, but their tunnels (except where I accidentally compacted) remain. Good air and water passage routes.

Totally understand your situation. When our house was built the good topsoil was scraped away down to red clay. We do trench composting as well as dumping bags of Black Kow, etc on the top. We also planted sections of white clover which fixes nitrogen and has attracted worms to work the soil. We have been here for 8 years so our soil is not totally fixed now but it is getting there. There are places where the red clay is now brown. It can be done but unless you want to buy dump trucks full of good soil, it will take a while to fix it.