Rotten Stone?

[Sue]

I'm gardening on heavy, oh so very heavy clay and in several parts of the allotment have come across veins of very yellow lumpy clay, impossible to break up, slimy and urggh. As well as this in places have also found what look like large stones, only as I have described them, rotten, all soft, these are yellow outside with grey and white insides. If you squidge the lumps there are often small stones inside them.
Anyone else come across this and know what it is?
Sue

[nick the grief]

I'm on top of a granite ridge so after 12 - 18" i'ts rock !! You need a geologist

[Crazy Chickie]

Sounds like proper clay to me. Dig it out n make it into pots Seriously though I don't know what to advise other than removing some of it n replacing with nice top soil/compost. If it makes you feel any better, I garden in a peat bog .

[Sue]

OK CC I'll stop moaning - but it's really a matter of interest rather than moaning, I've been taking the lumps out of the soil, but it's like all those other things I never took any interest in before I got an allotment, insects, birds and plants of course, just makes me realise how much I don't know with what surrounds me.
Sue

[Alice]

In gardening terms Sue, I would just say dig in all the organic material you can lay hands to in order to break these lumps down. If it's academic information you're looking for (ie the geological name for that kind of gardening rubbish) I'll ask my OH tomorrow and let you know. But at the end of the day, a Rose by any other name ..........

[Nicos]

Sounds like proper clay to me. Dig it out n make it into pots Seriously though I don't know what to advise other than removing some of it n replacing with nice top soil/compost. If it makes you feel any better, I garden in a peat bog .

Hey CC - me too!!!

Only a few hundred yards from where Lindow Pete was found!

Good to meet someone with the same soil type

[Alice]

I believe that yellow stuff is gold ore Sue. But don't think you'll be lucky enough to have gold in any quantity. Have you got the mineral rights

[Sue]

Alice
After fantasies of paying off my mortgage, giving up work and gardening full-time I decided you were jesting .. I haven't heard of any gold-fields in Tunbridge Wells...although I suppose there's always a first time.
Sue
NB
No mention of mineral rights on my allotment forms either

[Alice]

Not jesting Sue. Believe in geological terms it is gold ore, but, as I said, you won't get gold in any usable quantities. It may help to make you feel less bad when working in that heavy, clabbery stuff to remember that it's gold you're dealing with. Oh well, you can dream about it. If only