Add organic matter. preferably compost. But to the entire area, not just the individual planting holes.

If you are planting your new roses in one area of your property, like starting a dedicated rose garden, I would make a plan to give each rose a certain space, maybe 3 ft x 3 ft, with walking paths between and around them, made of mulch and edged in with a landscape timber. The mulch paths will breakdown gradually over the year, and enrich the ground right underneath them while you use the paths to care for/admire your new roses. Plant the roses with a good amount of organic material, and you are good to go, between the two. THEN, next year, after the mulch has broken down, you can either add more mulch and let it keep working, or dig up part of it to plant a few more roses, and make new mulch paths around them.... then just keep expanding the idea.

Add organic material to that clay soil, enough so that the soil will eventually have 6 to 8 percent organic matter in it. There is nothing wrong with clay soils that the addition of adequate amounts of organic material will not help solve.

kimmq is kimmsr

The only garden center in my area is lowes and they don't have compost... At least at mine. I read that you can add potting soil instead... Is this correct???

TG, you could use potting soil, but in the quantities you would need to amend clay it would cost you a hefty fortune. I would save your potting soil for the holes you drop your canes into, rather than trying to amend the larger area with it. Remember, gardening, though you may or may not always have the opportunity and ideal locations for it, is a lifetime pursuit, you take what you learn while doing it with you wherever you go for your lifetime, and if you get to share what you have learned with others, then for their lifetimes as well.

One of the first things you learn is an uncertain amount of patience is required of you while you are improving on whatever you are handed to start with. Start now to dig a deep well of it. ;)

PS: Your Lowe's store certainly SHOULD have compost somewhere, often outside back in a corner of the flowering plants near things like paving stones and fountain/pool supplies, and mulches. Find a friendly face there, and ask them to help you locate it. If you are sure you are going to need a whole bunch, then check your local yellow pages for a bulk supplier of landscaping materials, call a few and check prices and minimum truck-size delivery or pick up of amounts of things like compost, mulch, topsoil, wood chips, etc.. Before actually placing an order, though, see if you can drive out to their location (there may be some distance as most such suppliers are on the outskirts of population centers) to check the QUALITY of the products they have to offer. Other local gardeners or nurseries may be able to help you as well.

To know what and how much organic matter may need to be added to that clay soil these simple soil tests may be of some help.

1) Soil test for organic
material. 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.
For example, 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, to a point. Too much organic matter
can be bad as well.

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.

kimmq is kimmsr

Shocked to hear of a Lowe's with no bags of compost!

Well mine only has like one really crappy "compost" topsoil "mix"

Find a different store! Where there's Lowes there is usually Home Despot, Ace Hardware or your local independent nursery or farm supply. Gotta be something!

My local Lowe's does not sell compost. I have been using Kellogg Amend from Lowe's, yellow bag with Organic Plus in big letters.

edit: my local Lowe's sells compost that is labeled "garden soil for flowers and vegetables". Brand name is Kellogg, product name is Amend, contents are compost.

teen, go back to Lowe's, look for Kellogg Amend, it is the same thing the other posters are calling compost.

I have clay soil here in Alabama. One bit of advice about adding sand is something I did once, will never do again, and would urge caution and awareness that the clay and sand mix will get really hard.

We've talke about that here at various times. Unless you add a LOT of sand, it acts like concrete. Organic matter is the most fertility-boosting way, and if you are making raised beds and in need of more SOIL, silt or a silty-sand is good, to create more of a loam rather than concrete. Plus compost.

According to the people at Sourcewatch Kellogg Amend is sewage sludge.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Amend

kimmq is kimmsr

Whereas Kellogg's site lists the ingredients as:

INGREDIENTS: Compost (rice hulls, recycled forest products, arbor fines, dairy manure, poultry manure), gypsum, dehydrated poultry manure, hydrolyzed feather meal.

https://kellogggarden.com/products/kellogg/soils/?s=amend

They also say all their products are certified Organic by OMRI.

"All of our products are listed by the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI), the leading non-profit, internationally recognized third party accredited by the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP). That means every ingredient and every process that goes into making our products has been verified 100% compliant as organic, all the way to the original source. Look for the OMRI logo on the bag, ensuring every product is proven organic."

I suppose they could be lying, and maybe the OMRI standards have changed to allow sewage sludge as Organic.

Or, Sourcewatch's information is incorrect or out of date. I notice that all of the citations in that link are from 2010-2011.

Always good to go to the source and not just people who talk about the source.

I also think that SourceWatch article overstates, and that's putting it mildly. It says right up front that in 2010 San Francisco found one of their products to be 'heavily contaminated with dioxin'. SF's own report which they link clearly states:

"The priority pollutants found in the commercially available soil amendments [including Kellogg] and Synagro CV compost and their associated concentrations were similar in occurrence and concentration. The concentrations found were well below any currently established risk assessment or health advisory limits for potential exposure. "

I can confirm that last point. With respect to dioxins - which are floating around everywhere at tiny concentrations - the Kellogg Amend, which WAS using sludge back THEN, was higher than other compost products, but was orders of magnitude below the levels I'm familiar with for safety in residential soils.

I'm not a big fan of sewage sludge in vegetable gardens, wouldn't use it myself, but these SourceWatch people have a distorted story based (very loosely) on old data. I'm surprised Kellogg hasn't demanded they take down their incorrect statements.

Received an email back from Kellogg which said in part,

"We did produce three products that included Class A
biosolids about five years ago, but have changed our formulation in order to be
compliant with USDA NOP, which as you stated, does not allow biosolids.
All of our products are OMRI and California Dept. of Ag OIM approved."

He also said they have tried to get that old info off of SourceWatch but I gather they are on an anti-sludge campaign so they want to keep it up there even though it no longer reflects the facts. I would think it's only fair for SourceWatch to include a statement that the stuff is no longer included in their products. Shoot, they could claim victory. I really don't know what is wrong with people.