Breaking up heavy clay soil: relatively quick, and cheap, approach (pandemic-friendly)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 มิ.ย. 2024
- In the spring 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when the stores were all closed, we put in a garden and needed to break up our clay soil, but we didn't have the option of going out and buying...well, anything. Here's how we did it (spoiler: it worked pretty darn well).
See below the link to the other videos in this series:
- Link to Part 1 (Site Selection): • Choosing your garden s...
- Link to Part 2 (What to Grow): • How to plan and decide...
- Link to Part 3 (Garden Layout): • Detailed tutorial on l...
- Link to Part 4 (Bed Construction): • How to build raised be...
- Link to Part 5 (Soil Preparation): • Breaking up heavy clay...
- Link to Part 6 (Planting): • How we plant spring an...
Soil Texture Calculator: www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/...
Visit www.wellgroundedgardens.com for more product descriptions.
email-us@wellgroundedgardens.com for more information.
I've added leaves and grass clippings to our very clay soil. One time I added some sand, and every now and then
some fireplace ashes. After a few years, the soil is wonderful and the garden results are great.
Awesome!
We have very sticky hard clay on our land also. I tried for 15 yrs to amend it with organic materials tilling it in every year. Nothing changed until we got chips and spread them 6” deep and left it a yr. That still took a longtime to work.
Learning about hugelkulture, I built two 4’x12’x16” raised beds last Spring. I used hugelkulture to fill them as you did. We had an abundance of dead trees so cut them down and used small logs, branches and chips to layer the bottom half of the beds. Then the top half we purchased a transplant garden soil and filled to the top. Planted in that and am happy to report the vegetables are producing well. The old amended garden is resting this year. Will be spreading it over with a year’s worth of homemade compost this Fall and planting it as well next Spring.
Awesome! How has it been to manage nitrogen? That’s the only thing I am going to keep an eye on as this goes.
We grew up on the side of a mountain in BC with 0 top soil. Cleared land had a small amount of duff from the trees, then subsoil and hardpan. And rocks, pretty much 60% rock lol. We built all the garden beds with a very similar method to this. We saved all our pee to dump on the compost and garden beds. It works great and is free. Especially when you have a lot of woody material to break down, the additional nitrogen gives it a real boost.
I've also found diluted pee works wonders for new transplants, especially anything in the squash family which hates transplanting and is a heavy feeder. Over the winter I dump pee straight on the garden beds and compost piles. Spring to fall I dilute it about 7-1 in 5 gallon pails and then rinse the plants after to get any off the leaves. Urine is an amazing soil builder, and it truly is free.
“Liquid nitrogen” is the best..I have a large pile of wood chips and actively encouraged my son and all his friends to pee on them all last year. It should end up as pretty good C:N ratio and all of it was free. 👍
Quit peeing on your plants
It's humiliating for them
1990 I build a raised garden bed, 4'wide, 3'high, 35' long = 140 sq. feet. 4" wide is to easily allow access from both sides. 3' high is easy on the back (no bending). 35' long was all the room I had until my concrete walk ran out. I bought 2 x 12 unfinished redwood which still looked good 17 years later, when I moved. I filled the space with pure worm castings I purchased from a worm farm. I could have gotten a better price with a mix containing rice hulls, and should have for better drainage. I buried a 70' soaker hose, looped, on a timer.
Thirty-two years later I regret composting so much, using my neighbors grass clippings, because it was so much unnecessary work. I found using shredded leaves (15-1) every fall, the best soil prep, no need to compost. Also, always plant a fall ground cover, never leave the ground bare. Why? Roots build fertility best no amendments needed.
Now that I'm 80 I find annuals too much work, a food forest, much less so. Once a year, if the soil is poor, add free wood chips 1-2 feet deep, but NOT up against the trunk, keep damp to encourage fungal growth, for trees only. Monitor the soil. The chips shouldn't be necessary eventually, within 5 years, if you replace them with a cover crop and/or shredded leaf mulch.
Nice! I just made my first batch of leaf mold this past winter and love it for texture. I usually have crops in the ground in fall and winter but if not we’ve got what I call our “magic compost mulch” aka leaves and grass mowed up together at the end of the season and spread on the surface. It really supports worm activity. I only had annual gardens at this property (we knew we weren’t living here, long) but am planning a few perennial guilds at our new place-excited to get going!
Absolutely the best soil mechanics video I have ever watched, I have spent the last 50 years learning how to improve my poor soil by trial and error, but you explain it all in one succinct video.
Thank you! I felt like I got a little too technical in this one; I’m glad it was useful! :)
yikes! imagine not having it down pat after 50years
@@Gnolomweb When we moved here, I was told; the only crop you will grow here boy, is a good crop of stones! But I have proved them wrong!
Perseverance is severely underrated!
The method I use is this: Like you, I dig out the soil underneath the growing area and layer with wood, leaves, hay and whatever organic material I can find, then pile my soil back on top of that. I don't use the treated wood that you are using to surround my beds. It is costly, doesn't last very long, and has toxins in it that I don't like near my food source. I just mound the dirt up and rake it into a rounded, raised form. I also dig out walkways about 6 or 8 inches in between the rows with no grass in between like you have. I throw this soil up on top of the beds as well. Then I fill the walkways up with leaves, pine needles, hay, grass clippings. Use whatever you have. This keeps your feet out of the mud when it is wet, and forms a reservoir for the water to drain into when it rains. As you walk over it in the summer, you break it down, and in the fall, most of it will be decomposed. Worms love it. Flip it up on top of the beds in the fall when you tear down the garden for winter. Fill up the walkways with fresh leaves, etc. Do this every year. It is an invisible compost heap. Some soil washes into the walkways during the season, but it goes right back up again each year when you dig. You have to replenish the wood every 5 or 6 years, but you can just dig up one row each year so that you won't have all the fun at one time. I don't mind digging, and it doesn't seem to be much work at all to me. You can spread it out over several days, too, and it won't seem like work. I have a free source of hay, so I use a lot of that. I also pick up my neighbors' leaves, and keep a small compost heap where I dump kitchen scraps and coffee grounds. I encourage my neighbors to contribute. If you have a lot of trouble with soggy ground, try laying some drain tile under the walkways and connect it to a dry well or see if you can run it somewhere else where it isn't a problem. Thanks for the video. You are doing a great job. Keep it up.
Nice! We did something similar in the walkways with wood chips. Over time it definitely breaks down nicely.
Cardboard is a great weed block. Let it soak in a wheelbarrow for about 5 minutes. Lay it down and use a garden fork to punch holes for water and worms. Cover it with straw or lawn clippings. Keep the cardboard wet for a couple days so it sticks to the ground. Cardboard is free and the worms love it. I recommend getting "beer flats" from a liquor store.
Thanks, I was able to read that in a minute, and it saved me 14 minutes compared to watching the video.
Always read the comments!
@@firebird77clonefirebird89
I do the same… sometimes like this one the vids are all talk …
I learned more from comments
Yeah if you just want a quick tip, this isn’t your video
I'm a builder that does a lot of renovations as well. We collect old bath tubs for our garden and use them for growing carrots and potatoes
Nice!!!
your wife probably loves this
@@Gnolomweb I lold
One of the most informative and well done garden videos I’ve seen on TH-cam. Awesome stuff!
Thank you! I feel like I’m always on the verge of “overkill” and cramming in too much information-I’m glad this one was helpful 👍
I second that.
I agree!!! We needed that info about the simple way to learn our soil type & how to balance the soil We are newbie to gardening. It was very helpful! We have 8'x4' by 22.5" deep garden beds to fill. PS I like details! God bless you!
100%!
Not only a great video on soil prep and gardening, but you also did a wonderful job teaching it. This is one of the most effectively done instructional content I have ever seen and I am inspired by how you wasted no words and each piece of info was important and fit perfectly together. You are a teacher!!
Thank you for those lovely words! I land on the nerdy end of the spectrum (it’s ok; I’ve embraced it) and never know if the information is overkill-I’m so glad that this was useful; and resonated with you!!!
Superb video. I have no clue on gardening, biology or soil, but this has brought me right up to speed and I have to admit to 'rewinding' several times during it as you were so concise and I was overwhelmed with information. Just brilliant. Thank you so much
I’m so glad! It’s a fine line to pack in the info without people glazing over-glad it was useful. :)
I added a lot of leaf mold also. I live in a forest so that was an easy thing to get a hold of. Great video.
I’m jealous of your leaf access. :) Glad you enjoyed the video!
Just found this video. I've heard about soil type before, and done a little research about the soil in my area, but you broke it down so simply that it really boosted my understanding. Thank you!
Oh, I’m so glad! 👍
This video just hit my feed and I checked it out given we’re gearing up to clean out the beds for the season. I figured it would be just another getting started video but was really blown away with both the simplicity of the explaining but also details on a more technical level, but not too much. This was a fantastic blend and I think really would make someone just starting out fell like “heck yeah, I can do this too”! Thanks so much and am happy to say you’ve gained a new subscriber. I’m looking forward to catching up on your other content.
Woot! So glad that it helped you to feel equipped. If I can do this, anybody can do this. ❤️
This was such a great tutorial!! Thank you for such easy instructions.
Of course! I’m glad it was useful. 🙂
Wow! Can’t wait to see how it all worked out.
So far, so good! We are now two years in, and have had good yields out of this soil
I really appreciate you sharing that soil graph. I'd never seen one before even though I subscribe to probably dozens of permaculture and gardening channels for several years.
Glad it was helpful-I am a *serious* nerd and it comes across in the content :)
really helpful for our new house garden setup. thanks a lot
You’re welcome! I’m so glad it was helpful
Great video - I've been battling heavy clay for several years, but the addition of plenty of organic material and my plants are thriving. I do still have problem areas so this video is so useful to me.
I am trying to learn to love it…mineral content and all that…but there are years where I wish I could afford to just truck in a few loads of compost. Glad it was helpful. :)
You can always add another set of the wood later(say next year) to elevate those raised beds and add more organic mulch materials to compost. I started off with 12", added another, and then another to about 24-36" depth. Great video. After about 7 years of adding organic carbon each year, the soil becomes a "full community".
We ended up doing exactly that-in 2021 the stores were fully open once again and we bought more materials and added a second layer 👍
thank you so much, it was my plan to layer it but i just wasn't sure, now i know
Love your work!!! Well done, all hard work will pay off in the end 👍
Thanks! It’s worked out shockingly well so far. We are on our third year with this soil, now, and its structure is quite good. 👍
Awesome info! Thank you! We are starting from scratch in really heavy clay soil. This helps a ton.
I’m so glad! If I was to do it, today, I’d go buy a few bales of hay and use it as the bottom carbon layer.
Most helpful. 👍🏻 I’m in coastal MS, reclaiming some seriously neglected flower beds that have become more clay than anything.
I am glad it was helpful! I have this mantra: "Clay is great for mineral content....clay is great for mineral content..." It (sort of) helps. :)
Brilliant. Sometimes when we're forced to come up with a solution it can be the best. You have done that
Thanks! It’s worked shockingly well, so far. Necessity is the mother…
Great info & ideas. Through all the coffee grounds you can into it also. Used grounds won't change pH but worms love it & the more worms the better the soil. I just dump our coffee grounds on the ground near plants & have been out at night with a headlamp to find worms all over it.
We use our coffee grounds for my internal worm bin and you’re right, they LOVE them 👍
What an outstanding video. I really appreciate your information. Thank you very much.
I’m so glad it was helpful-we are now a year later and that soil did way better than I expected. We made the beds deeper this year and so I did some “lasagna” or sheet composting (we’ve got a new video on that) but the original experiment was definitely a solid outcome. 👍
This is absolutely fascinating!!!
Thanks! That was a few years ago; we did an update more recently: th-cam.com/video/d15vlOgVEY0/w-d-xo.html
Had a dry hard clay soil and have improved it a lot mainly by adding wood chips. Wood chips alone were a huge help for my dry and hard soil. Bought a wood chipper but also got several bags of wood chips for free. Riding my bike I noticed that they took down several trees and left piles of wood chips everywhere. Went back and filled up my bag several times. Now I keep wood chips and spread around green material to add nitrogen. Got worms everywhere now.
Nicely done!!! We have a huge pile of wood chips slowly decomposing and I hope to use them in a similar fashion; I MAY even have encouraged my 7 year old son to pee on it a few times, for liquid nitrogen. :)
Great video and informative. I have two more beds to get in place and will use this to improve my soil along with reducing the cost of buying some soil
I’m so glad it was helpful! It saved us a ton of money and we’ve been happy with the results so far (now two years in)
One of the best videos about clay soil.... thanks.
Thank you! I’m glad it was useful. :)
This video was super helpful and I appreciate all the info and especially the diagrams and examples. Thank you so much 🙏🏽
You’re very welcome! Glad it wasn’t too much detail. :)
I used a lot of Leaves and Grass Clippings later along with straw. Working great.
Nice! It’s amazing what organic content will do 👍
Thanks for a great video. We had a similar situation when we converted a disused horse training round pen to a vegetable garden. The only thing we added to your process was a crop of sweet potatoes we planted the first year to loosen the pan. We chop and dropped the tops and left the potatoes in the ground to rot to give the critters in the soil paths for deeper exploration. We also cut instead of pulling non root crops so the root systems stay in the ground for the same reason. Our compost contains mostly grass clippings, rotten hay, kitchen and garden scraps, chicken bedding, and cow manure from the dairy which surrounds our place. Our beds are 2x6 & 2×8 from a post 2003 deck (no arsenic) we removed. We also used recycled deck boards to create a 5 foot wall on the north and west to moderate the brutal winds we have here. A small greenhouse for protecting tomatoes and peppers is probably next. Western Wisconsin USDA zone 4-b.
Nice! I’m glad to hear that you grew sweet potatoes in Wisconsin; I am trying them for the first time next year, here, in Michigan. 👍
Great info about leaving roots. Thx!
You’re welcome! Glad it was helpful. :)
old horse pens are hard to farm, I think it is copper from their urine. It has been many years since I read the article, possibly ask your county extension service for more information.
You are a great teacher. You used terms I understood & didn't talk "above" my brain ,lol. I cringe when I think how I had a man till my garden about 6 years ago. My poor soil was damaged, but I hope my adding constantly compost to amend it is better now. Lesson learned.
Thank you! Yeah, we’ve all committed our share of soil sins over the years. Nature is pretty forgiving 🤷♀️
Very well done video!
Thanks!
I found your channel after watching gardening videos for a while. You're the first one that made me hit the subscribe button! Great content, detailed explanations, without fuzz and jumping around for the sake of putting up a show. Please keep it up! It's not nerdy. There is audience for your more foundational approach too.
Thanks! I super appreciate it; I’m not especially good at ‘pizzazz’ so I’ve got to let my nerd flag fly. I’m glad the content resonates!
Fantastic video. So informative.
Thanks! I’m glad it was helpful. :)
Great video, I learned alot from it where as when I watch other videos I find I dont absorb as much information. Recently moved and my new place came with a backyard 4m x 12m and it is all clay, in the process of slowly changing that, and this video will definitely help! Thanks.
I’m so glad it was helpful! We recently gave an update on the results from this, as we put it in two years ago:
Breaking Up Heavy Clay Soil: Two Year Update
th-cam.com/video/d15vlOgVEY0/w-d-xo.html
Top shelf content , thanks!
Glad it was helpful!
Technical :) I understand it, well done. I like the jar test and triangle chart. Building the layers for the chemistry is helpful too.
Glad it was useful. :)
Great video for my clay soil. thanks
Glad it was helpful!
Most informative video on soil I have ever seen.
Glad it was helpful!
i took a dozer and dug a trench 3 ft deep and filled it with horse & cow manure. I put railroad ties to raise the beds 15". let it lie for a year. the water stettled on the bottom of the clay troth and the plants grew above ... result black soil and no watering even with a 2 month drought.
I am jealous of your access to heavy equipment. 😂 Sounds like an awesome approach!
@@WellGroundedGardensthat's Exactly what I thought! But I'm in the city, so even when I was looking to borrow a tractor, I knew I'd have to ask the city of Eugene how deep I could dig
We’re in the suburbs, and, same
Do your plants taste like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons? Or do they taste like phenol and cresol. Worst yet...do they taste like benzo pyrene/ benzene which are carcinogens. Sounds yummy 😋
Very beneficial and Extremely beautiful.
Glad it was helpful!
Really good video.
Thank you.
I’ve seen a video from the Maritime Gardening where for the first year of a bed he plants potatoes which does the job of breaking up the soil. He is also a heavy mulcher. That won’t fix the initial soil composition fast enough so I would start with amending the soil and maintain nutrients and water with the mulch.
Thank you! I am designing a new site, now, where we are about to move; and the planned orchard area literally has major construction equipment parked on top of it. I am going to have to do something similar to the potato method you referenced, but probably with daikon radish to be even more aggressive with breaking up the soil.
I enjoyed the video and loved the idea of filling the raised bed using the hugulkulture way. I too am determined to enrich our heavy clay soil back garden so I can plant greens to feed my chickens. I followed the method that ‘The Texas Doc’ TH-camr recommends which entails airing the soil with a heavy garden fork, adding home made compost plus fresh manure and bedding. I work these inputs into the top 6” of the soil. The last step will be to add mulch but I won’t do this until I can tell the soil is less clay and more loamy. It’s been a lot of work the last couple of weeks but I will continue adding more organic matters as my animals produce more. So far so good and I’m hoping to sprinkle some seeds and grow some flowers a greens in the spring. Can’t wait to all the veggies that your raised beds produce.
I’m jealous of your system! I can’t wait to integrate animals into my setup (mine will be limited to a small flock of chickens) to really amplify the soil building process
Cool stuff , your a great teacher . Thank you for sharing
I’ve got the black clay soil so this was surely for me
Thanks!
Hello, thanks for a really informative and usefull video!
In my area in Denmark, Western Jutland, we have sand on top of sand mixed in with sand 😀
To give the soil/sand more structure, i left the weeds in between the beds; that prevents mud in wet periods and their roots give some structure as well.
The weeds will never go to seeds because i walk on them often, keeping them "down".
When everything is harvested, i leave the soil as is, letting the weeds grow up.
The hens get to roam in the beds for a week or so, eating larves and bad insects, leaving some sporadic manure around.
After that i spread the spare clover seeds i have.
Clovers are very good green manure.
The weeds and clover often gets a relative good start before the frost sets in, giving structure and again prevents mud in wet periods.
I also spread the bedding from the chicken coop, just remember to filter out their manure, it needs to composted due to the very high nitrogen content.
If we dont get much snow/rain during the winter, farmers fields and bare gardens gets scared and "sandblasted" like the face of Mars, therefore just something to keep the sand and nutrients in, is vital.
Our sand packs hard during a winter, so some sort of turning or working is required during the spring/pre-seed.
I use a manual broadfork, that way i can control the upper most layers of the soil and disturbance is kept to a minimum.
I often just lift and air the soil instead of actually turn it.
If there are many larves from bad insect, i let the hens get a week or so to "clean it".
Over the years, my garden have become more and more soil and instead of throwing the weeds on the compost, just leaving them on the sand is much better.
I love your approach! I am planning to work chickens into our system next year when we have more property; it inspires me to know others have successfully tried that. Thanks!
Tatooine sand people...
Super helpful! Just moved to clay soil from Florida and feel lost with how to garden! Excited to learn how to do this and get in the dirt, ahem, clay.
Enjoy! Honestly clay really is great for water retention and mineral content; it’s a pain but once you add enough organic content you’ve got some pretty killer soil.
Excellent informative video. Thank you.
You’re welcome! I’m glad it was helpful
Hi, Great video! Informative! Thank you so much! Best, Albert from SF
I’m so glad that it was helpful!
Fantastic video
Thanks!
Really well delivered information and very useful as well! Thank you and great job on the video. I will definitely reference and share with others!
I’m so glad it was useful!!!
Very informative, thank you!
Thanks, I’m glad!
Excellent, logical, scientific and clear
Thank you! I crammed a lot of information into this one; I’m glad it held together 🙂
Very Good Video. Really Professional.
Thank you! I’m glad we’re hitting the mark. I never know how “nerdy” I should be in these. 👍
Thank you for such an informative, well explained video. This was quite useful information as I battle with clay soil. I live in the Carolinas and the clay in my yard is frustrating. I could build a clay home with home interior accessories such as vases, plates, cups and water pitchers. 😂 Thank you for explaining and showing us how you tackle this issue. 👍
You’re welcome! I’m so glad that it’s helpful. And yeah, I have a background in pottery as a hobby and have quite seriously considered making some tableware from all the clay that I see when digging 😂
Also, do you worry about what your neighbors may have sprayed or distributed chemicals onto the on their grass? I was thinking of that when you were placing the grass clippings in your garden beds. What zone are you in?
We were using the clippings at the start of spring (that’s pre-mowing season, here) so it was all small branches and twigs from pruning, plus some leaf litter that had been under the snow. We are in Michigan, Zone 5/6 and have freezes into mid-May. Later in the season we save our own lawn clippings as mulch but I only use ours for the exact reason you’re mentioning. 👍
@@WellGroundedGardens Thank you for explaining. figured as much. I know you wouldn’t use chemical treated lawn clippings in your beautiful garden. All this is new to me so I’m soaking up, learning and observing everything. You have a short growing season with the long winters you have. I’m sure you make the most of the warmer weather. I’m enjoying your videos and subscribed.
Oh, believe me, there’s a very good chance I’ve accidentally put something on there that I shouldn’t have 😂. Glad the content is helpful! I just finished planning our growing area for “long season” crops and need to motivate myself to go out in the cold and film, again 🥶
Thanks for all the great information :)
Glad it was helpful :)
I do a similar "light" hugel for some stuff, no logs. I like hollow plant stalks most cured at bottom fresh ones layered in the middle of the pile. Helps keep it carrot friendly. Your videos are great 👏
Thanks! Glad to hear that somebody else is trying this. I didn’t even think of carrots, but with the depth of these beds that’s an awesome idea (once mine breaks down)
We use a leaf blower/vaccum to shred bags of leaves that we collected in the neighborhood. The smaller pieces were easier to use and less likely to be blown away by the wind. We cover all our raised beds with this and in the spring we work it into the soil. We have several composte boxes made from old pallets and we have access to horse manure, and chicken manure(we have a small coop) which we mix together to our leaf mulch...it's alot of work but well worth the effort. We also started a worm farm to help with kitchen scraps....We use that when we are planting in the beds (a cup or so per plant)
I am jealous of your shredding vacuum; we have to run ours over with a lawn mower. No access to horse manure, either, but I am building a coop this fall on our new property and hope to load it up with leaves and other carbonaceous material for the chickens to work into compost. I also have a worm bin and am a fan of getting animals to do my composting, whenever possible. :) Hope that your gardening season is going well!
Work less by mimicking Ruth Stout's no work gardening method (Rhodale Press late 60's); year round mulch (protects the soil and minimizes weeds). You don't need to mix the leaves into the soil in the spring better not to dig them in, they decompose best right on top of the soil (research where different types of soil mycorrhizae are found); just pull back the mulch, where you want to plant, to let the soil warm up before planting. She also eliminated composting by just putting any compostable matter directly on the soil under the mulch. I just threw everything into my chicken pen; what they didn't eat they turned into a form of very rich compost; which I only placed on top of the soil (covered with mulch of course to avoid loosing the Nitrogen) after planting.
Soaker hoses under the mulch, on a timer, eliminated time spent watering and did a better job all round than overhead watering.
So I got my soil prep work pretty much down to spreading leaves spring and fall and digging the stuff out of the chicken pen in the spring. Practiced minimal soil disturbance when planting (only loosened the soil with a spading fork when planting carrots or parsnips), and supplemented for minerals lacking in the area's soils.
All the above got the garden maintenance, for 10 4'×15' beds I rotated in annual vegetables and over 50' of 2 1/2' deep permanent perimeter beds, in berries and long term vegetables, down to less than three hours a week divided between new plantings, controlling the direction of plant growth (caged tomatoes and cucumbers, trellised pole beans), watch the plants grow and harvesting. Until the snap beans started coming on, then I had to spend over 45 minutes every other day, in hot weather, just picking them.
I spent significantly more of my garden time on harvesting than planting and maintenance combined.
I’ve read her book; so far I don’t have access to nearly enough mulch material but it seems to have worked well for her, and I know people that swear by it
Love the name of your channel
Oh, thanks! I tried to capture the data emphasis/nerdy tone of most of my videos 😂
This is very good. College level lecture, I would say. Thank you.
Thank you! I probably err on the side of too much information, but I want people to walk away with the fundamentals as opposed to “step 1, 3, 3”-that way they can adapt to their own situation. Appreciate the comment! :)
Great video, thanks 👍
Thanks! Glad you liked it. 🙂
Thank you for your videos
Glad they are helpful - thank you.
Great idea! We have clay soil. I don't even have to test it. I hope to use some of these ideas to help make useful soil.
Let me know if it works!
Thank you for video and information
Glad it was helpful!
Great video with a lot of content on the why and how of preparing and accomplishing the goal. It answered questions I had after watching other videos on remediating clay soil.
Thanks! I’m glad it’s helpful. It’s worked for us so far-totally worth doing it, even when it was so cold my fingers were freezing. 😂
Nice video. Very informative. Made my beds out of cinder blocks. 2 (16") highx3'20'. Used small branches, leaves and grass. Then 2" soil from garden and 2" compost. After growing season 6" leaves with grass clippings. Spring time , 2" compost and planted.
Was still about 1" from top. The blocks last forever, the wood, only 3 years till it starts to rot out. After 10 years am up to 32" high, drains well, grow just about anything.
That sounds like my dream soil-congrats on the hard work paying off!
I just got bridal Vaillancourt to cover my young plants for bug protection.
Thanks for teaching
Let me know if it works!
Where we live in Louisiana, we have so much clay that when we are dealing with that, we only have MORE clay to deal with. Biochar is also a huge help in amending and breaking it all down
I haven’t tried biochar in larger volumes-I use it in my worm bins to stabilize their environment and moisture levels, and they inoculate it for me. That biochar/casting mix is a major component of my seed-starting mix. But by the time I transplant those out, it’s a small percentage of my soil volume. Some day I may get more ambitions and try and produce it at scale…I’m too cheap to buy it 😂
@@WellGroundedGardens find local cabinet and furniture makers. They tend to only use hardwoods and will often gladly give you all their small scraps for free. Problem solved
What a timely and helpful video. Love the clay/sand/silt chart. Thank you! Is it safe to use other people’s bagged grass clippings for my vegetable beds if I don’t know what chemicals they use on their perfect lawns?
We used other people’s branches and twigs and such for this project, but we only use our own grass clippings as mulch because I’m worried about herbicides.
Great video, God Bless!
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. :)
This was great! Thanks!!
Glad it was helpful!!!
Great stuff. Subscribed.
Thanks! I should have more coming, now that we’ve started to thaw out. :)
I gather lots of leaves and pile them up as deep bedding in my chicken coop. Getting it deeper & deeper as winter sets in.
It helps the coop stay warmer in winter.
The chickens dig thru them all winter along with fir shavings , straw & hay. Leaves have all kind of minerals in them so it's good for the chickens.
They break them down really well in about 6-8 weeks so I add more as I have it all winter. I add them to the compost pile or new garden bed in late winter. The chickens really speed up the process of the leaves breaking down. The chicken manure helps break them down even more.
We get lots of rain here in the Pacific NW, Oregon so it doesn't have to be out in the rain very long to make it useable in the garden.
I mix it with my clay soil to help break up loosen it. A little more every year.
Go get them leaves.
Love your system! I’m hoping to do something similar with our coop as we get it established next year. 👍
I have a yard vac/chipper-shredder that hoovers up all my leaves and shreds them at the same time. This breaks them down , which helps them compost very quickly. One could also use a regular shredder or a lawn mower as well. It makes some excellent garden soil in the end.
That sounds amazing. Where did you find it? Brand?
@@WellGroundedGardens Mine is a Troy Built that I got at Lowe's. It was a returned product and so I got a nice discount on it, as it clearly not new. I had a neighbor that had one, which he got at an estate sale. My yard had a dozen trees and raking all those leaves was a real chore. So when I saw him using that machine I knew I really needed to get one. First it was just about getting rid of the leaves, then I discovered what a treasure all those shredded leaves truly were.
While looking for spent hay to put on the garden, I found a local farmer that "let" me clean out his cow barn! We watered the manure/hay mix and stacked it in piles. We then let it compost about 3 months (shorter time 'cause it got nice & hot). That's been the base of my garden soil!
Nice! I’ve been looking for a similar source, locally
THANKS FOR THIS INFORMATION
You’re very welcome!
I experimented with my very heavy clay soil and found that digging up shovels and turning them up when moist putting a generous amount of wood ashes on the clumps seem to break it up.After that I put 6 inches of shredded leaves on and I grew some nice tomatoes on it. good video. happy gardening
Nice! I haven’t tried wood ash. 👍
I'm working on something similar here. I'm digging up where I want my garden, burying food scraps, and wood chips, etc in hopes to amend the soil. It's already breaking down and at least is easier to work with now.
@@flutey28 try the wood ash my garden was a lake bottom draind out and now I have 6'' tomato plants and 4'' peppers be careful with the wood chips they take nitrogen out of the soil .once you get the soil loose top it off in the fall with shredded leaves every year. Oh I forgot to mention I bury a few raccoons there the worms love it.
I'm using your method on 2ft deep holes for 21 different fruit trees that I'm planting, with throwing rotting bark, twigs and limbs in the tree hole, with covering the wood with the organic dirt (found 2" to 4" beneath leaves in the wood forest ) in covering-up the wood in the said hole. Then, plant the fruit tree with backfilling with said organic dirt and regular dirt prior dug from the hole. Then, topped-it-of with 2" of said organic dirt mixed with Texas Longhorn dried cow manure (50/50) covering the surface of any/ll dirt around the planted fruit tree. Watering every 2 to 3 day's for 2 months until the fruit tree roots rooted-in the soil.
That sounds intense but also like an amazing environment for the trees as they establish. Which tree varieties are you planting?
I shred the fruit and vegetable scraps to speed up the decomposting process, i store it in a bucket then i put some earth worms in it and let them do their job and i covered the opening to prevent rain from filling up the bucket and flushing out nutrients
Using 2x6s was actually a smart thing to do in the long run. All my beds are 2x6, because as I make more compost and biochar, I raise them another tier. While in your case, it seems as though it was more of a price thing (they were EXPENSIVE last year, which is why I went with 6s and not 8s), it allows you to build up as you need more room. I'm on pure Southern red clay, so I had to go up. Then, maple roots invaded and I had to build a floor raised out of plastic pallets, so again, another tier! You're off to a great start, and I like your hoop covers too.
Thanks! In our case it was definitely a cost thing as supply chains went crazy during COVID. But I ended up being happy that it was quasi-modular and that we could add tiers as you’re describing. I’m expanding the idea to our proper compost piles and making those modular as well. 👍
@@WellGroundedGardens Sounds like a plan! I think a lot of people who started last year ran into a plethora of problems that aren't normally as big of a deal, and cost/lack of materials was certainly one of them. Composting is fun once you get into it. You'll be checking the temperature twice a day, LOL.
I have red, _ dark gray clay, in the same beds.
Have you been able to get decent soil texture with organic content, or other methods?
@@WellGroundedGardens Oh yeah! It's predominantly compost, but I also add humus that I scrape up from under the beech trees, where I haven't bothered to rake for many years, along with gallons of biochar, fresh wood ash and any of the clay that might get shoveled up with the ash or humus. Clay contains valuable minerals, so if you can actually get some into your soil, it's great. I also have a sand/humus mix I shovel up on the side of roads in subdivisions where lazy people live and never clean the leaves out of the gutter.
Once I get a camera and learn how to edit and upload videos, I'll make some that cover all of this in detail. 27 years so far as the chief conservation officer with a dawn redwood preserve has taught me a LOT about forest soils, so I'm just taking that knowledge and applying it to my raised beds now. It's amazing how similar a forest and garden are, when it comes to growing media.
Thank you, very informative and well produced. The soil charts and the soil test were just what I was looking for. I have experimented with adding charcoal (or biochar) to my clay soil but so far I have not been able to see real benefits. It is very time consuming and you need a lot of charcoal for it to really change your soil type, I think the soil charts you showed support this as well. Most of my soil preparation still is making my own compost.
I do think you get more bang for your buck with compost as far as soil transformation. I do use biochar in our worm bin (I even did a different video on that) and I think it helps with keeping the environment stable in the bin, and with my seed starting mix. But overall it’s a teeny tiny percentage of my soil in the garden. 🤷♀️
I've been studying up on biochar. It's not a fertilizer, and not so much of a soil amendment although it does loosen clay. It's a sponge for nutrients and water and a home for fungus and roots. It improves fertility noticeably when properly inoculated. It decreases fertility until it has soaked the nutrients up. It sequesters carbon for hundreds of years.
We've been gardening for 40 years in the same plot and the compost we've put in earlier has to be continually replenished. It oxidizes and disappears into the atmosphere as CO2. I've cut down a bunch of evergreen trees so I'm planning to get rid of the waste by making biochar if I can figure out how to do it legally, safely, and effectively. It solves several problems: waste cleanup, fertility, and carbon sequestration.
Yes that’s why I’m innovating mine in compost and worm castings…loading it up with beneficial life before we add it to the soil
@@jamesvandamme7786 I have a small test plot to see what happens when you put in 5% biochar and the difference is quite small. I did notice that in this sand/clay soil mix I have, that the larger pieces of about half an inch start to come up to the surface after a period of rain. I did grind the biochar before applying but evidently, not very evenly sized. Good luck with amending your soil, I think it still has potential but I also lack the experience of applying it properly.
@@samvimes1482 I've seen claims of 10-40% improvement in yield when properly inoculated. My wife buys Miracle Gro for spot application which looks like compost, fertilizer and biochar but it's expensive.
Thanks for shareing
You’re welcome-thanks for watching :)
One of the issues in warmer climates is that the soil animals eat down the organic material very, very rapidly. I've had the soil collapse back to clay within 6 months. It's not a one-shot, you have to keep adding more. The good news is that if you are improving with large amounts again, within that limiting time frame, it is much easier to do if you're digging it in. Easier yet to go no-dig, if you can add enough organic material.
I’ve heard that from others, as well-that the never ending consumption/application of compost is a real problem. Our climate isn’t that warm but we get that problem on a smaller scale…I would ideally need to add probably an inch of compost every year.
Yep - out here in arid CA I would like to add at least 5" -8" of compost or mulch or wood chips or something, but I can't do that much for every bed. I have to rotate/renovate by turns, a few each year.
When assessing soil type, just feel it, make a ball. If it’s smooth in texture, it’s mainly clay, and will form a ball that doesn’t fall apart. If it’s very Sandy, it will feel gritty and a ball will fall apart. If it’s a loam, it will be in between, also darker in colour ( more organic matter), often with a sweet earthy scent. Then adjust accordingly. Stacking inverted turbes, is called a loam stack ( that’s what you are creating using the turves). Traditionally people used to make the stacks near their compost heaps / bins, for convenience.
Exactly! use your feels...
If I tried that approach I’d probably end up with a vase 😂
@@WellGroundedGardens And know doubt a work of art, I hope it sells well.
That is a standard method for soil assessment used by field workers and agronomists throughout the world, before going into greater detail.
@@WellGroundedGardens @@@
nicely done. We get down at least 24" and yes its work but lots of branches bark leaves paper waste. Gardening can be good exercise and I do not mind it.... we are lucky in the our township composts our leaves most of it is 2 years to compost so it is amazing leaf mold. Unlimited and free. It is how to deal with our clay. Each year as it breaks down the base layer we add in some more peat (we need a little acidity) and more leaf mold. Turn it in each year or every other. Gypsum helps water drain through clay. Awesome video. Low cost. Thumbs up
I am insanely jealous of your access to leaf mold…in theory our township offers compost, but I’ve never been a key to snag any
Nice info. For yrs now I go to my local town park and collect about 10 bags of leaves in the fall, they dont care that I do this. I set up 3' tall wire fencing at about 4' diam. to start. I pile in the leaves , watering the layers as I build, also added to this pile is plant debris . I do buy some rabbit pellet as an initiator to start heating the pile . My goal is to hot compost turning the pile thruout the winter . When it is finished in the spring I pile it in my raised bed . After yrs of making this bed is quite fertile and can grow anything in it.
Nice! I made leaf mold for the first time last year but VERY inexpertly. Your system sounds way better. :)
Probably the best garden investment I ever made was a 4x8 trailer. It has hitched up behind 4 different vehicles over the years to haul leaves, compost, manure, sand, woodchips, dirt, tomato cages, t-posts, rototillers, lawn mowers, and of course household stuff. Keeps your vehicles clean, is a cheap investment, and opens up the garden compost operation like never before. You will find out if you go big skipping the composting work and directly applying heavy leaves in the fall, chopping them down on garden with a mower (I use zero turn,) then tilling them in after they have gotten wet will give you a wonderful soil for plants in the spring. It will be rough yet for small seed crops so what I do is alternate the leaf application and leave open enough ground that only has manure or compost application and it will till just fine for your small seed like radishes. I also have heavy clay soil and any organic material is the correct solution for me. One more note is the sand subject. I have seen the comments of adding sand to heavy clay causes harder (brick comments) and I find that is just not true. I run 50x50 garden patches, one has "sharp sand," one "river sand," and one was a very round sand a neighbor gave me from a volleyball pit. All three are awesome to garden in, and I definitely prefer them to my non sanded plots. So if you get offered sand, use it.
Nice!!! I have been eyeing a trailer now that we have more land to work
I farmed 80 acres of heavy cay with a lot of river rocks. I spent 5 years trying to cultivate the 33 acres irrigated Concord grapes, buying more horsepower and heavier iron. One year I worked the field flat instead of ditching it, with the grapes on mounds that had built up over the years. The water spread out and a day later the soil was saturated 8 ft wide, with the 2 ft mounds dry . It worked great except 3 years later I had so much organic built up that I could not get the water through some of the rock bars. I did not mow the field until the end of August, and the weeds were about 4 ft tall. They were woody, so they did not break down quickly like mowing green grass, plus the roots had grown deep to break up the soil.
How is the texture, now?
This is a great informative video. I live in Kentucky and our yard is Almost pure red clay with chunky rocks mixed in. I’ve been working on it for two months now and I’m struggling a bit and have been to spend quite a bit of money on soil from the store and didn’t mix grass clippings in and didn’t have time to wait to make my own compost but since I see this video with something like this work when your soil is like mine?
Mine was quite literally pure gray clay, about 1.5-2” thick with only half an inch of soil on top and sod over that. Any time it rains we see standing water at the base of the grass plants. I had fewer rocks but yes I think this approach should work-the trick is to get down a layer of organic material under the clay and not physically work the clay, itself (otherwise it gets dense and turns to concrete). Flipping ours over in sheets worked well for us.
Many municipalities and counties offer free compost & mulch made from ground up landscape debris. It doesn’t hurt to ask if yours does.
I did-ours supposedly offers it, but they never seem to have any available 😕. Great tip if others can access it!
Skids lined with cardboard make nice tall square composters, used rug for warmth, and a tarp as moisture barrier under the rug to cover it. *Leaves are worms fav food. Leaf mold as a liquid fertiliser decomposer in big barrels. Let them slow brew for amazing ferts... Its under Korean Natural Farming. KNF is a rabbit hole you will appreciate going down. I shred cardboard and its a leaf substitute, because I am new at this point and havent learned to collect leaves yet. lol and it is a great home for mold.
I’ve been afraid to start studying KNF because I *know* that I’ll go way down the rabbit hole. 😂. Thanks for the info!
Our small shaded yard went to cu. yards of dead leaves, branches some rotted tree fruit that got sprayed with water in the shade during the plague (years). Cleaned up that unplanned compost and hard pan clay is still just as bad as the untouched sunny side. Tilling and amendments seem to be the only solution
Some people have shared that they just piled up mulch or compost and worms did the work underneath, but in our experience we had to physically cut out our sod including the clay layer and flip it over on top of the leaves to get workable soil in the first 6”. Sounds like yours is an even tougher case than ours. :(
Thank you.
Glad it was helpful!
Thanks for sharing this info! You said you didn't purchase anything, where did you find the paper cover for the beds? I think home depot sells something like this but not sure how much it costs. Thanks again!
Hi! The paper was something we’ve used before so I had it on hand; we bought ours years ago but it was from gardeners.com, I think. “Weedguard”
I have a 25x25ft garden that's 3yrs old and have heavy clay so I added composted horse manure. I tons and tons of weeds. This year I added 120 of those leaf bags I got for free. I layed out about 2in of leafs then mulched them with my lawnmower...and did this over and over and over again. I now have about 4in of leaf mulch. I dont see weeds standing a chance this year. Next year il do the same thing.
I’ve heard that horse manure can be an issue for weed seeds…there’s a horse boarding site near us and I really want to ask for soiled bedding, but the weed potential gives me pause. Glad you found a solution!
@@WellGroundedGardens
If you can add the bedding to a large compost pile and get it up to 130°F for a few weeks, it'll kill off the seeds.
@@WellGroundedGardens Evidently Aminopyralid contamination of horse manure can also be an issue! There's a growing awareness about it in the US the UK and Australia!
@@WellGroundedGardens We go to a sewage treatment plant of the city council, where they collect all the vegetable matter from pruning trees, shrubs and leaves from all the landscaped areas of the city and the areas under their maintenance to compost, and there we go with our sacks and to a super cheap price, at a bargain price we can buy bags from 20 or 30 liters of already matured vegetable compost. The greater the quantity, such as for farms, etc., the price is even cheper! I don't know if you will have this possibility where you live, but it is worth finding out. You pay 10 times less than in a garden center for a large sack for our vegetable garden.
Never use manure from a farm! It will be loaded with weed seeds. I only buy bag manure from the nursery centers. It is heated at a high temperature that kills off the weed seeds.
Thank you
Glad it was helpful. :)
Hulcultur is great and i do it similarly but, but inverted grass, dried leaves, teepee of dried in place till hard not brittle plant stalks over that, few shovels of soil, and a coco mat on top. Was incredibly warm even in jan/feb zone 7a. What it made was suupper fine light texture dark compost that had to be dilluted to grow in 😂 I personally grow native clay loving plants in my clay first (large wild lettuce is great, let it bolt, and preferably a species reistant to powedery mildew) they dont care about hard clay, drought, cold, or anything, produce an amazing volume of leaves and stalks, can be topped to produce way too many seeds, and have thick roots. They convert those nutrients locked away in the clay, into leaves that once composted are now in a useable form as well as shading the soil, trapping aphids, and being a nice addition when baby greens to a salad. Also, sheep sorrel lovess clay and the rhizomes spreead quickly. It might change the ph of the soil potentially t but ive found no issues so far except it spreads and grows VERY fast which i actually like 😄 Fish served on top of sheep sorrel is fantastic with its lemon taste.
Awesome! I’ve never grown sorrel, but it’s on my list. I need to find a permanent spot for it, first. 👍
This is very very helpful. We will try to implement these methods. Maybe you could grow oxheart carrots? We’ve started two earth beds kind of like this, but we used a lot of wheat straw we bought very cheaply. We added peat & some compost.
Nice! How did you balance out the nitrogen?
@@WellGroundedGardens well, we didn’t. We’re going to add eaves next. And then whatever else we can get cheaply. We’re just letting it rest & using our raised beds and containers right now
clearing a plot of land that had been abandoned for 25 years, completely covered with brambles up to 3 meters high and I took them to an area of my land and made rows so that they could dry in our very strong summer sun and then I shredded them again and passed the cut grass to get dry matter, also many branches of honeysuckle, flower stems of gauras. and I have been mixing that dry matter with grass clippings. the pyracantha also gives me a lot of dry matter in addition to dry leaves every year. the worms love to be under these rows and then I can incorporate that into the clay soil and it makes it fluffier. before my ground was dead, now I have a lot of life under it. It is a slow, non-aggressive job, but the response of the soil and the microorganisms is optimal. I have more than 300 species of flowers and ornamental grasses that now grow flourishing and healthy along with some vegetables and giant sunflowers. my floor was harder than concrete in the summer and a sticky quagmire in the winter, I didn't see a bug. now I have migratory birds in summer, endless pollinators, local birds singing until dawn. I never used pesticides or herbicides. I started from scratch in the fall of 2018 and what helped me the most is not leaving the ground bare to avoid erosion. even if it is a kind of cat grass, one of those that disappear in summer or are easy to uproot, but something has to be planted. I have added well cured manure free of pathogens and weed seeds, vegetable compost mixed with silica sand and mulch in the areas that I was interested in growing small seeds for arrangements or food, but only to help have a fertile area to start and from there all the plant material from pruning etc. I am going to throw to other areas of the garden. I cover the aisles with non-perennial weeds without root or flower and pruning debris and where I do not grow anything, I plant perennial lolium and mow from spring to early winter to get green matter and mulching, leaving some seeds to continue covering ground. same with catnip and marigolds. clay responds wonderfully to NOT being uncovered.
@@WellGroundedGardens we did our in ground garden this year, I’m heavy clay. The area we filled in peat moss and compost did wonderful. We’re going to do that again with the rest of the garden this coming year. Thanks though bc your video helped me have the courage to try.
Your planting templates look like they are made of a natural material. Yay! I would like to avoid using anything made from plastic into my garden. Polypropylene is out. Woven burlap or processed hemp or cornstalks or straw fabrics would be wonderful. This is turning out to be not as easy as I thought it would be. Thanks for your thorough and approachable explanations.
Hi, yes, they’re made of a biodegradable paper (we got ours at Gemplers: gemplers.com/products/weedguard-plus-biodegradable-paper-weed-barrier?currency=USD&variant=21171854639193&Google%20Shopping&.com/products/weedguard-plus-biodegradable-paper-weed-barrier%3Fcurrency%3DUSD%26variant%3D21171854639193%26Dcpc%26Dgoogle%26DGoogle%2520Shopping&US_2043129495641_21171854639193&gclid=Cj0KCQiAwJWdBhCYARIsAJc4idB1HMFL_b3DU4XyHGkbcxsTivmhCe-_88TLFXCytVW6kJ_JMpivQccaAvFoEALw_wcB). Over time they break down and add organic content to the soil.
@@WellGroundedGardens this is the best news I've heard all day. Thanks for the link. Happy holidays and Happy New Year!
Same to you!