The GW Lawn forum spends a lot of time talking about soils and soil testing. There are a couple types of soil tests including a squeeze test (which I've never seen discussed on the forums), the jar test (measuring sand, silt, and clay content), and chemistry testing. Logan Labs in Ohio has been found to be the most consistent and reliable soil chemistry test lab in the US. Their basic, $25 test is all you need. I am certain they accept soil samples from around the world. They will email you the results and you can post those to the lawn care forum for very specific advice. In the US only about 5% of the people who think they have clay actually have any clay at all. The rest have an imbalance of salts (calcium, sodium, potassium, and magnesium). In those cases the soil can be fixed by correcting the salts. But you can't know what to fix without the soil chemistry test.

Organic fertilizers like soybean meal, alfalfa meal or pellets (sold as rabbit chow), corn meal or flour, are available wherever animal feed is sold. The application rate over large areas is 15-20 pounds per 1,000 square feet (roughly 10 kilos per 100 square meters). For individual plants you can apply a heaping handful scattered under each plant on a monthly basis. For roses my favorite is corn meal because it has other beneficial properties. These fertilizers will save you a lot of time over the lengthy composting process.

There is a lot to say about cover crops. When your roses are not in season, plant something else to develop roots in the soil. Grasses are excellent but there are other choices like herbs and vegetables. It is the roots living and dying in the soil that can really loosen it up.

I'm with you, Melissa! I have a super tight amendment budget and general gardening budget and a very limited time budget. Then, there's entropy. The 2nd law of thermodynamics is forever in my footsteps, nipping at my heels and undoing all my hard work!

Soil is the foundation of a natural environment, the food from which a sense of place springs. Nothing says PNW rainforest like PNW plants that grow happily in PNW soil. As you are, I'm learning to embrace what the (somewhat amended) earth chooses to grow.

Portland is clay...or clay and river rocks. I love your pottery comparison. I really could invest in a wheel and throw bowls from the "dirt" in my back garden! Regardless of how much rich organic matter I dump into my native soil, the ever resilient red clay devours 80% of it over time. The earth's reclamation process leaves behind just enough amendment for some drainage and textural improvement which satisfies many OGRs and other sturdy characters.

My plant list looks like an economy model of yours: old garden roses, lilacs, mock oranges, kerria, spirea, peonies, bearded irises, honeysuckle, etc. I have abandoned ceanothuses (no matter how blue and lovely), certain large-flowered clematis varieties, anything that must be dug and stored, all but a handful of potted HTs, etc. Even without the burst of gorgeous high maintenance (for this area) plants offered at local nurseries and online, even without Marechal Niel, my garden is becoming quite satisfying in its own way.

In camaraderie with you and Mother Earth--Carol

Yes, of course you are correct. I have an example - Valerian (Jupiter's Beard) has naturalized here, and comes in to my garden without invitation. I actually like it. I was amazed once when a friend of mine gave me a book on old garden plants. Valerian was listed as having been a valued garden plant (for ornamental purposes, as well as medicinal) in England way back to the 16th century.

Anyway, I have seen it completely cover 2 road cuts (the high, almost vertical cuts made when roads are cut through hills) near here. One is next to a major 6 lane freeway. The other is just next to a normal road. The almost vertical slopes are very rocky. Each Spring the Valerian covers those steep slopes - all three colors, growing happily. Soil? Not much at all. I think there are plants for almost any condition where humans live out of doors.

Jackie

Without a doubt plants will do best if they're given everything they need, but I find a certain satisfaction in being able to eke out a reasonable garden given far less than perfect conditions. Bagged soil added at planting, leaves as mulch and adequate watering is basically all they get these days, although in better days I used alfalfa meal. Even that had its problems with clumping and drying. I find I have a great appreciation for plants that do well with a rather Spartan regimen, and admire their tenacity and generosity in giving me beautiful flowers.

Thanks to you all for your answers. I see that Carol and I are in particular on the same wavelength: I like your account of your garden! Ingrid, we're all lucky that plants are determined to live and will grow and bloom in considerably less than perfect conditions. Jackie's example is just what I'm talking about. We have some very poor ground that is carpeted with wild creeping thyme: in spring when it blooms it's lovely. Locally I see beautiful plants growing in compacted gravel by the roadside and in rocky areas: a running perennial euphorbia, tall bearded irises, Globularia, Saponaria ocymoides. dchall, I've hesitated how to answer your thoughtful suggestions: I appreciate them, but they're not workable here, mainly because of the scale of our operations. Our garden is a few acres, and we have probably in the area of five hundred roses, and a couple hundred more shrubs, plus all the other trees and herbaceous plants. If you consider the cost of your suggested amendments, cost of transport, the labor of spreading them, in a terrain too steep for wheelbarrows--and we don't have a tractor--our willingness to wait for half-rotted hay to decompose may seem more reasonable. We can get five tons of old hay, carried here and the bales distributed through the garden, for about $260 (cost is essentially for transport, as the hay is valueless to everybody except us). It's up to us to spread it and dig it in later, of course.

What you say about people thinking they have clay when they don't is interesting. Have I been fooling myself all these years? Our original soil, in its unimproved state, is moldable when wet and takes fingerprints. That may not be enough information to say what it is. I've never had a soil test performed, and it has crossed my mind that it might be worth the trouble, but inertia and a willingness to experiment have kept from me from doing so. What I have found, though, is that if I add enough organic matter to the soil I can grow a very satisfactory range of plants quite well, and so far that's been good enough for me.

About cover crops, I agree with you. My roses grow in a meadow environment, in fact, with annual grass in the beds, and we sow clover in the grass paths (a genial idea of DH's some years ago). It was a great day for me when I realized that I didn't need to pull grass under the roses, just shear it, so that the roots would remain as organic matter that I didn't need to dig in. Once our roses and shrubs get to growing well, they don't need more amendment than the organic matter they themselves produce with perhaps an occasional scattering of old hay.

P.S. Anna-Lyssa, I appreciate the compliment!