working clay soil with hand tools

My wonderful girl friend wants a small garden. We have some rail road ties to enclose a small area, about 14x10'.

I decided to just use hand tools just to learn more about what works. I started by turning over the crappy clay soil with a shovel and cleaning out the garbage left there by the last occupants of this trailer.

Now I am thinking I will let the damp soil dry as big chunks and then hoe them into finer chunks later. I can then level it out with a rake. I see no reason to try to chop up the grassy chunks until they are drier and more manageable.

After that we were thinking we would get some sort of soil to lay down and layer some peat moss over that.


I am no gardener.....am I doing it right?

You can get bags of compost at Lowes that are pretty cheap and will really add nutrients and organic matter into what you've chopped up. Clay can be a pain to get stuff to grow if it is really dense as its hard for young plants to root through it. The organic matter will help that.

Hey batman,

One thing we did that really helped our clay soil a lot was add some concrete sand to it. It didn't compact badly and drained much better after that.

It sounds like you're going to end up w/ a raised bed, since you're using the railroad ties. Here's an archive link to the great railroad tie debate from last year:

http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_10_19/644080__ARCHIVED_THREAD____Raised_beds____howto___And_____what_if_it_s_a_wet_location___now_w__poll__.html&page=1

Good luck. You're certainly not doing it the easy way w/ hand tools...

-Slice

Get on those clay chunks before they turn into adobe bricks. There is a critical point in the drying process, somewhere between glue and concrete, when clay soil almost crumbles apart and doesn't stick to the shovel. Check the chunks every few days and attack at the appropriate time. Wait too long and you'll be hating life.

Get rid of those railroad ties. You don't want those chemicals leaching into the food you are going to grow in your garden.

Welcome to the hell of clay soil. Lots of composted manure and other organic compost.

Rent a rototiller.

Get a pick/up truck load of organics tilled in with the above mentioned sand. And you want to test the soil for p.h.
Your local state college or Land Grant university has an Ag Extension office that can help with soil amendments.

Several things come to mind.

If you have surface clay, whatever you grow there will have a tough time of it, even if you manage to make a few inches of decent topsoil.

You may wish to consider raised beds. They can be made out of lots of things. Plenty of youtube videos on them. The biggest disadvantage of raised beds is the need to water them just about everyday. A soaker hose on a timer can help with this problem.

Clay is just not a good soil for growing much of anything. You can make it better by the addition of sand, vermiculite, and organic material.

But it will probably be easier to just have a load of nice dirt delivered instead of screwing around trying to do it yourself.

If you don't want raised beds, dig out 12-18 inches of the clay and put in good dirt in its place.

Here's our raised beds from last year:



http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=168247

Currently have red cabage growin in 1 of the 4 right now.

Good easy to read book:

Sqr Foot Gardening

Let me know if you want me to ask the guy who leases my land if he has any composted manure . Also, I have a Troy-built Pony you can use if you'd like.

Turning small beds by hand becomes much easier if you can lay a heavy layer of compost on the bed for a year or at least a few months before turning it. The difference is really surprising.

I really like to use big cubes of compressed composted peat to amend the clay at our place. This works really, really well for small plots. It would be expensive for a larger garden, though.

A landscaper and VERY good gardener I used to work for suggested gypsum for the clay soils around here. He claimed that sand can go either way, making your clay soils either better or into adobe. Add compost as well for making your soils lighter and more nutrient rich. Also have your soils tested for pH to see if you need to add any other supplements to balance it.

Renting a rototiller would kill the experiment and get rid of my excersize. Why not mix it up by hand.

Thank you. I won't need the tiller, but the compost manuer would be awesome.

The soil is not all clay. I just saw some in the turned up soil. I want to make sure I have every chance of making this work. I might buy some sand too.

Be careful about letting it dry too much. Dry clay soil can be harder than cement.

There is an 80 year old house in our area dug out of hardpan clay.

check it out for reference if you want. Pretty cool. Talk about SHTF proof dwelling, too bad its now in the middle of the ghetto in the city...

Another vote for construction sand to go with the the peat moss. I sowed granular bush fertilizer and lime into mine also.

Through the years, turn the cocoa shell mulch into the soil most year has kept it fluggy. Until it is loose, be careful with your soil fork, you can easily bend the tines on those.

ETA:

Batman, I understand skipping the rototiller, but a rototiller replaced a horse amd a breaking plow and harrow, not a shovel and soil fork. During it yourself, you are doing the Horse's job.

You may just build an inground pool using this method, depending on how deep the clay runs.
Ask me how I know.

Gypsum does work, over time.
A buddy from SC told me about it years ago. They use gypsum and sphagnum.
I use gypsum and pig poop.

Yep, I ended up driving rebar through the bottom of my garden bed to create drain holes.

I have been called a horses ass.......

You definately want to chop them up when they are moist. If you had an extended dry spell around here, large chunks of clay become miserable to work. I would use the analogy to "bricks" but without reading the thread, it most assuredly has already been said. so file your shovel, turn the earth and come back the same day and chop the turf up as much as you can. Addint biomass to clay changes it's nature 100%. You can have wonderful topsoil from clay by adding living matter and letting bacteria go to work. Adding rotted "peat" frm the chicken coop can help too.

one more thing - you WILL need a rototiller.

If you just rototill, you only have a seedbed down a couple of inches. Even new tillers just don't till that deep. I bottom plow about 10 inches, then rototill.

Hit it with a shovel, go in a pattern turn it over as a bottom plow would do it.

Next hit it with a tiller to make a fine seedbed. You are creating a mixture that has evenly distributed organic material.

The guy that offered you horse manure - that is the bestthing you can do for your soil.

gonna be honest with you buddy: you are too late. You shoul dhave turned that dirt at the latest, last fall. let is sit over winter then till it again before planting. Of course you are not really too late, you can certainly get a garden it. But it takes years to cultivate a garden spot. good on you for starting. There are countless people who think they will "just put in a garden" if things get tough. It's not that easy.

You also have a "seed bank" to deal with on new ground. Some people lay clear plastic over it the year before to allow heat to kill seeds down an inch or so. I have plowed new ground then had weeds come up I had NEVER seen before which makes me wonder if they were 100 year old seeds.

Get some manure from the family farm. Work it in. Repeat.

Whatever you do DO NOT DIG CLAY SOIL WHEN IT IS WET!!!!! You never want to dig any soil when wet but heavy clay is the least forgiving. You can ruin the entire garden for the year by doing so.

The main idea behind the raised bed sqr foot garden is you don't need to mess with your soil (PH levels etc.) nor do you need a rototiller.
You make a perfect soil mixture from the get go and put that in beds.

The author of that book recommends a mixture of peat moss, compost, and vermiculite.
Out here in the ozarks of MO we couldn't find vermiculite anywhere. Every place we asked for it they said vermicla what?

We used 4 bags of top soil (from compost) & a bag of peat moss for each 4' x 4' cube and have about 8" to 10" of mixture in each.
I believe the book says 6" is really all that's needed.

We used 2" x 12" untreat lumber to build our boxes. Lowes cut them down into 4' lengths for us.
The idea behind the 4' x 4' square is you can reach into the center from all four sides.

Assembling the boxes was just a matter of drilling 3 holes in each end and screwing them together.


Another idea with Sq Ft gardening is to have a compost pile going at the same time as the garden and through the winter season.
For following seasons you add your home made compost to the beds.

For our cabage, we added the soil out of tubs we used to grow tomatoes in last year.

Main reason we went with this style over a traditional in ground bed, is the ground in here is crap - filled with rocks.
Digging in it is a major pita without a backhoe.

You mentioned the Ozarks so I'm assuming you are in my AO. If you need Vermiculite check with Nixa Hardware, SOMO Ag Supply, or Carsons Nursery.

Grove

Thanks, I'm down a little west of Gainesville so Nixa / Springfield is pain to get to. That hwy 160 is biatch.

We have nasty black clay in Dallas, you can dump all the gypsum and peat moss into it that you want, it just eats it up.

The new recommendations are to incorporate expanded shale to help break up the clay. Once you add it, it will stay broken up and all you need to add from then on is organic matter. It would be worth your time to rent a tiller for a few hours, add the shale, and work it by hand from there.

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/newsletters/hortupdate/hortupdate_archives/2003/nov03/Expdshale.html

My garden has clay about 2-6 inches below the surface. When I started working it last year I put several bags of manure, compost, and dirt on it and tilled it all in with the clay by hand. This year I added about another 2 inches of compost and tilled it in again. So after only two years the soil is in much better shape and the clay isn't so bad.

If I were to work the same area for many years, and even better, had a gas-powered tiller, I'm sure the ground would become very nice after not too long.

I also keep a compost pile of leaves going all year long to add to the garden in the spring.

we did a little 6x12 garden at our house and it had very heavy clay soil. What we did was:
1. build up a frame around the area (I do not recommend railroad ties, use 2x6 framing lumber)
2. dump a couple of bags of grass clippings into the bed
3. pour a couple 80 pound bags of sand over grass clippings ($3-4 at harware store)
4. pour a coulpe 50 pound bags of manure over the grass clippings ($1-2 at hardware store)
5. get yourself a good metal or fiberglass handled spade shovel and dig down 4-6inches
6. get yourself a good metal or fiberglass handled hoe and start breaking clumps up
7. once large clumps are broken up, use the spade and hoe to thoroughly mix it all up

It will take probably 15-20 hours to really thoroughly hand turn everything together in a small raised bed but it can be done. For best results, let it sit for a few weeks but if in a hurry, you can go ahead and plant now. Best results will start after it has aged for a while. We did this in our little bed a couple years ago and it has produced great for us since then. Each fall, we dump grass clippings and leaves in and let it compost over the winter and we love fresh produce from our micro garden

I have about 3 man hours into turning over the soil and hoeing it into bite sized chunks.

Its not easy going, but that is part of the experiment! I will keep hoeing until I have at least 4 to 5" deep of loose soil. I figure another 3 hours of hard work to get that far.

Then I will pick up some bags of sand, some manuer from my sisters horses, and some peat moss. I need to look over this thread with my GF since she know more about gardening. Then I will blend it all up nicely. I might have 10 man hours total in my tiny garden to get it ready for planting.

Honestly I am a gardening retard so you all are a great help. I will take some pictures once the dirt is looking less like grassy clumps and more like loose soil.

doing it wrong. take a round point shovel and go down 6 to 8 inches, one shovel at a time. put your weight into it. hoing at4- 5 inches won't do it.

and it isn't "peat moss" it is just PEAT.

If you add up the years, old time gardeners have hundreds of hours just in tillage of the garden. 10 hours is nothing.

I am sure you will have good results, but your reference to having "10 hours" into this makes me think you have unrealistic expectations. sorry if Im wrong.

I spent the first hour turning over the soil with a shovel. Its been turned over to the full depth of a standard shovel. I've been chopping up the big chunks of grassy dirt until there is nothing bigger than a quarter. My reference to the depth of the hoe is the loose depth (the hoe is about 6" to the shank s I must already be a little deeper). I will be adding about 3" to the bed in other material that will get mixed in.

It may not be text book for how it would be if I used a tiller, but it should be okay. Using nothing but hand tools is part of the point.

batman, your method should work just fine. It is how we did ours and we pulled bell peppers, jalapenos, tomatoes and potatoes out of ours last year and all did pretty well. Some of the tomatoes ended up splitting when ripe but I think that was because of the crazy hot summer we had. Each year you do it, your bed gets a little better so expect some results first year and more each year after that. Oh and also expect some failures too. All part of the experience. We plan to downsize our house and move to the country soon and will be getting a place with at least an acre so we can do a big garden. Wife and I both love gardening and btw, it is great excercise!

My GF's son and I just put a hard 1.5 hrs into the plot just now. That put us up to about 6 man hours. We completely turned up the entire plot with a shovel again. The dirt is broken up to 8" deep throughout the whole plot. We went over the whole thing with the hoe and then raked it out some.





I did notice the dirt likes to pack itself down. It tries hard to stop my hoe. I am going to go to a garden center and buy some stuff to mix in to it.

I am planning on putting the stuff we buy on top and mixing it in with the shovel and raking it all back out. Is this a good idea? We really need to fluff up the soil a lot. The soil is already 3 to 4" higher than the surrounding area.

This was a great, hand toughening work out!

ETA: we are going to pick up a few bags of sand, a few bags of compost, and a bail of peat. Then I will just mix it all up to the full depth of the broken up soil.

looks like you are off to a great start. Try to get more organic matter in the soil. I see no reason why you can't just spread the organic matter over the surface and turn it in with the shovel. Just going to take alot of time to get it really mixed in. You can buy at the hardware store to get started but might want to consider starting a compost pile at your place and make your own. There are some good threads about composting on this forum. It is actually very easy to do. Basically, food scraps, paper, leaves and grass clippings can all be recycled into compost. Once you start doing it, you will be amazed at how easy it is and also how much less garbage you throw away!

I will warn you that gardening can be addictive. When you harvest your first fresh produce and see how good it tastes, you will be looking for ways to expand your garden every year. Good luck with the garden and let us know how it turns out.

To be honest with you, I have nothing but bad experiences from my step dads garden when I a kid. It was torture. He was an ass. That is why I am not convinced that I will get into it big time, but it is a survival skill and I need to learn. I am going easy on the kids an the work load to keep it fun. I will worry about composting once I have more land and space. This is just a start.

Thank God my sister and several of her neighbors are gardening pros.

Went to the shed and looked:

I used peat, consctruction sand when I dug it up and through the years

pelletized limestone

and a 3-5-4 garden bed fertilizer

amazing that I have empty buckets labeled from 15 years ago. Then again, I do post here.

You can also get a cheap battery operated pH meter for the soil, so you can figure out which way to adjust it for what you want to grow.

My personnel opinion is the sand is the main filler that keeps the soil seperated.

I bought a couple 50 lb bags of sand to spread over the plot. It put only a sprinkling over the whole area. I better buy a couple more. I should have the rest of the stuff tomorrow.

I bought a wide tine pitch fork to turn over the soil to mix everything up tomorrow. It works really nicely. Even though the soil likes to pack itself down, the fork slides right in and lifts and busts it up as I turn the dirt over.

Yeah, 100 lbs of sand isnt much. I think in the end when you get it all mixed in, you'll notice the difference, tho. IIRC, we put about 4 tons on our garden, about 35x60'

based on the pic it looks really good. i would have added either pearlite or vermiculite not sand but no matter, i think it iwll work fine.

Get rid of those Rail Road ties as borders.. Google it please.. the chemicals will leech into your garden.. Please dont use them.

I bought 6 bags of manure/humus and two big bails of peat moss. I may buy more next pay, but its all I can spend right now. It's most likely going to be pretty short of what I really need. I can get some free horse manure from my sister too. I think the saw dust and horse manure would help some.

I mixed all the stuff I bought in with the fork. I gave some more chunks to bust up in the next week. I think the soil is soft enough. It just needs more manure I think.

Copyright © 1996 - 2013 :: AR15.Com LLC :: All Rights Reserved.
Any use of this content without express written consent is prohibited.