Growing in clay soil - what to do?

https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=620 will give you some ideas and advice.

My soil is clay but does respond to lime as also very acid. Builder's lime is cheap but use half to three quarters of what you would garden lime. (I'm guessing if you are a chemist you can check your soil.)

If you don't have money to spare then what about creating raised beds by moving the soil at the side up on top so you create a ridge. You can then plant on the top area of the ridge which will be well drained so in 1.5m width you plant 1m. You can plant green manure type plants lower down the slopes where you are less concerned about production and just want volume, just don't let them get too big before you chop them down. The choppings can be put over the whole the soil surface, including where your plants are for worms etc to pull them in. This will get you towards a no dig system and increase the amount of soil you have. All your lawn mowings can be sprinkled onto the soil surface. You can sow several succesional crops of green manure. Spinach seeds are often to be found very cheaply and make a great green manure.

Others will be along soon.

You could make "lazy raised beds" by digging out the paths and putting the soil on the beds. It will raise the beds a couple of inches, which will be 6" compared to the paths. IME that is enough to improve the drainage of the beds.

If you don't like the layout, at the end of your first year, then you can just move the soil about again and try a different arrangement.

My soil isn't stony, but I come across the occasional one (bantom egg of larger) and I lay it at the edge of the bed. Periodically when there are little piles I collect them and put them at the end of the bed. When that is a big enough pile I move them to a big pile of stones that I have, which I use when I make a soakaway for drainage, or have a similar use for some stones. Dunno how well that strategy would work on a more stony soil.

Make a compost heap ... in the Autumn you can incorporate that in the beds. The fact that you might not have enough this season doesn't matter unduly. If you can find more, can afford to buy more, then fine - add more. If not then you'll still get crops just fine, it will somewhat delay how soon the soil improves ... on a budget concentrate on making as much compost as you can. Any source of additional material you can think of? People who have to pay for Council Compost Bin who might prefer that you just empty their compost wheelie bin every couple of weeks instead?

This is a useful thread http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...oil_74287.html it includes advice from Two Sheds who is queen of composting on the soil surface. It also occurred to me to ask does your local council have a food waste/green waste composting facility? If so you can possibly pick up organic matter really cheaply there if not for free. Some councils will even deliver it by the tonne to allotmenters.

Fantastic. We will definitely get some green manure seeds for after the summer! I've read a lot about "no dig" and it definitely seems the way to go. I've already been stockpiling free barley straw after seeing the photos of a lovely "no dig" allotment sticked on Grapevine.

I'll also check to see if the council has any such scheme.

I can't believe I've never seen nor thought of this. Simple yet brilliant!

Very reassuring to hear such a seasoned grower say that it'll probably be ok. Sometimes all you need is a bit of a virtual hand holding.

Friends of ours owns a small farm it's mostly arable, but they also have a few hundred chickens and some cows as well as barns full of straw. We're over for dinner next week so I'll see if there's anything they can offer us.

Thank you, both of you

You can grow the green manure through the summer - that's the point - and chop it around.

It's nice to see me and Kristen with the same idea although I don't think they are "lazy" raised beds! (Still a lot of work)

Ditto all the above. My council sells soil improved for £2.50 for 25kg or £27 for a ton delivered to the kerb or £12 a ton if you pick it up yourself (with a trailer or pickup).


How big are the stones and what are you going to grow. For carrots, parsnips, etc they'll make the roots fork. If you're going to get em out just do the bit you need, a little bit each year, rather than try and riddle an entire plot. I've riddled one bed and have a small rockery to show (from quail egg size up to the size of your head). Alternatively you could do a raised bed for the roots first then add more when affordable.

I always assumed "lazy" because there were no formal / timber sides ... although they are also "lazy" as the soil on the edges, over time, collapses onto the paths and the edges need tidying up every couple of years. I also found that it was hard to plant right on the edge - so I didn't get quite as much into (well "across") the beds as I do now I have formal timber edges to them. But I managed Just Fine for 5 years or more until a kind friend gave me a whole load of timber that he no longer had a use for

If your plot's just grass and has been fallow for a year or more, it is possibly quite fertile on its own, so you could choose to see the additions of muck etc as soil improver rather than fertiliser.

Do you have muck deliveries to your site? Or can you visit a local stables with a pitchfork and a trailer or bags and a well-lined boot/car? Lots of the local yards here have big piles of well rotted manure, particularly the private livery yards for some reason, rather than the public riding stables. Our site has an arrangement with some stables for regular deliveries of fresh manure (paid in beer) so I usually have a couple of daleks plus the hotbin full and 'maturing' during the year.

Rather than manuring the whole thing, you could just use manure/compost in the seed drills and planting holes as you put veg in. It's much more cost-effective if you are getting your wallet out.

As for stones, it depends on their size and what you want to do there. My friend's plot over in High Wycombe seems to be on a flint seam and we take out stones the size of a child's head fairly regularly. My stones are much smaller and I leave most of them in. If I am growing roots (parsnips, salsify - which is GAWJUS, carrots etc) I tend to stick my hoe handle in the ground about 8 inches deep, twiddle it a bit (technical term!) and backfill with damp compost and sow into that. Or you could riddle a particular area.

Let us know how you get on. I'm on heavy orange clay so you have my sympathies for its challenges, but it really is fertile stuff. You need to keep the hoe moving once you've dug as it does tend to set a crust on top which can be hard for seeds to break through and for water to get down through.

Here you are, one lazy raised bed. Three or four years ago this was the roughest of rough permanent pasture. It has had anything that will rot chucked on it under cardboard over every winter. My soil is pH 5.1 and only a few inches deep before hitting serious clay and rock.

This winter has been quite dry so I did pull the cardboard off and tidy it for the pic! Although, it's probably a bit early. I've put it under some clear plastic now to encourage it to warm up (North facing slope) and keep it a bit dryer before planting.

As you can see,I hope, I cut in the sides, this is to encourage ground beetles to fall in and stay and eat slugs, these edges will be cut in much more sharply after planting - the only spade work involved, any lumps are broken up with a fork. Cutting in also means that, as the soil slumps, it doesn't fall onto the paths. The bed will be forked over again and raked smoother/leveller before planting. (It is a long bed - it's filling a funny corner and two would have been too short. And please don't look at the weeds in the leeks!)

Thank you so much. My mind is at ease a bit. I was wondering if we'd manage to grow anything this year!

Marchogaeth - thanks - fab looking beds! I think we'll need a few "lazies" as we can't afford the wood for it all right now. How you get it looking so neat I do not know!

I'm going to do lazies on the plot I've just taken on - with gravel boards around the edges to keep the grass out. I have put in terraced raised beds on my first plot and they are fab, but it's a hell of a lot of work to begin with. My plot's not as steep as yours, but it does drop about 8 ft from the sw corner to the NE.

Check gumtree and places where there is building work going on for old pallets - they make an excellent source of free/cheap timber for building beds/fences etc.
I'm on clay too and would back up what people are saying - clay does actually hold lots of nutrients, it's more the drainage and acidity you need to worry about. I'd test the PH and maybe if you can't afford lots of compost do half compost and half sand? this should help drainage as well as fertility.
Don't dig when it's wet or it'll dry into a horrible hard crust (it often does this anyway)

Photoshop!

'Real' clay soil is so heavy and wet you can't dig it in winter, or only with great difficulty and then it becomes rock solid when it dries out in late spring and summer. So you only have a small window of opportunity to cultivate your soil in spring!

The answer to this is to open up the soil with lots of organic matter, which sounds so easy but can take years. Lime does help but you need loads of it and to work it in to make a real difference.

I am a great believer in methods using loads of top mulch, everything from straw to wood chips, as long as they are not dug in as this will rob nitrogen from the soil. Take a look at the Youtube videos on 'Back to Eden' (rather hyped) and One Yard Revolution which is well informed, and you will get the idea.

Essentially, by keeping the very poor soil completely covered with a deep layer of mulch, you retain the moisture meaning it can still be cultivated in summer, and the mulch suppresses the growth of annual weeds.

It can be tedious as it means you need to grow the plants in modules or pots to plant out by drawing back the mulch, and to sow you need to clear a wide drill of mulch and work the surface layer into a decent tilth.

I do believe this is one of the easiest ways of dealing with difficult and weedy ground, though you need a good source of free mulch. You might find a wood supplier who has bark chips for free and you can use ruined straw from a farm or stables.