Clay soil can make planting a frustrating experience.
Clay makes great dinnerware, sculpture, and flower pots -- and frustrating garden soil for many kinds of plants. Composed of smaller particles than sandy or loamy soils, clay bonds with water molecules to form a slick runoff surface, or incorporates larger amounts of water to form mud as sticky as gum. Some plants do well in clay soils, such as forsythia, euonymus, spirea, dogwood, and hawthorne. Their root systems are strong enough to penetrate a gluey planting soil and aggressive enough to spread beyond it in search of air and nutrition. To expand your planting choices, however, soil needs testing and amendment.
Instructions
1. Test the amount of clay in your soil with water. Dig holes 18 inches to 2 feet deep in several locations in the bed or area you are trying to amend. Clay often runs in layers or veins; digging several sample holes may help you learn how large solid clay areas really are. Fill each hole with water. Time how long it takes for the water to soak into the soil. Any area that requires more than 15 minutes for the water to soak in can be improved with amendments.
2. Aquire as much coarse organic matter is possible. Heavy clay soil may be made up of 50 percent clay particles or more; your goal is to reduce this percentage to between 25 and 35 percent clay. Inorganic material helps a lot, too, but making coarse organic matter a "heavy half" of the mixture improves soil nutrition, aeration and water absorbency best. An informal way to estimate what you will need for a small bed, for example, is to picture the surface mentally as covered with a single layer of buckets, then divide that total into parts: if it takes 10 buckets to cover the bed, that means five or six buckets of organic matter and four to five buckets of inorganic filler. A good way to estimate for a larger bed is to measure its width and length, then multiply by 12 inches in depth. This will tell you how many cubic inches of material you need to amend a large area. Divide cubic inches by 27 to obtain a cubic-yard figure for shopping.
3. Search out soil amendments that will keep soil pH between neutral and slightly acid for evergreens. Leaf compost, composted manure, sewage sludge (like milorganite) all work well. Because you are planting evergreens, operate on the like-by-like principle: the huge heap of pine needles and cones shed by a neighbor's tree is worth hauling home and digging in. Ask your county extension agent about the utility of gypsum as a soil amendment in your area; opinions on its usefulness differ sharply from one region to another.
4. Work amendment material into the soil to a minimum depth of 1 foot, using the shovel and spading fork. Go as deep as 18 inches if possible; this lets you plant larger shrubs and trees without hitting a clay barrier. You may find it easiest to divide even a small bed into digging squares roughly 2 feet by 2 feet. Dig your darndest, then move on.
5. Spray the dug bed with the hose and watch for spots that absorb water poorly; you may wish to add a bit more organic and inorganic materials in that area.
6. Dig a mixture of organic and inorganic materials throughout the clay area. While it is tempting to place a drainage layer of pebbles or coarse sand at the bottom of your hole, the mixture will serve you better if it contains organic material as well. The danger, since clay runs in layers, is that there may be more below your planting depth, and water will pool up through the gravel, drowning roots.
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