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Heavy clay soil
Sainfoin
Posts: 3
I have very heavy clay soil with very poor drainage in winter and dry cracking in summer. What would be the best way to improve this please?
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Posts
The recognised method is to dig in plenty of strawy manure in the Autumn along with plenty of grit at the same time. Double digging is the best method, however you can rotovate it in but the ground needs to be workable to do it.
Just what I was going to say! Manure and grit will pay dividends. If you add a some grit every time you plant, it will also benefit the soil over time. If you can't get a supply of farmyard manure or horse manure, you can buy it in bags from the usual outlets.
Clay's great once you get it in good order
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
If it is your Veg patch I would bury manure in the autumn and leave the lower spit on the surface [i.e. turn soil upside down] to let the weather break it down. If it is your lawn try and improve the drainage by using a hollow tine in autumn to remove cores of clay soil then put grit into the holes that are left.
It is all down to hard work, one garden I had got truck loads of manure and grit, waste paper old woollens cardboard and anything else I could lay hands on. After three years as we marched out it was workable for the ones marching in. What got me some plants was digging the clay out just larger than the plant root filling with good compost and grit the planting, they mainly thrived, root vegetables went into raised beds, there after I took soil samples and also carried a compas, thus my South West facing garden with friable soil. You live and learn.
Frank