New Allotment - clay soil

[porterlizz]

A friend and I have just taken over an allotment in Bristol. The soil is quite clay-based, and is on a sunny South facing slope. We've just had it a couple of weeks and so far we've trimmed back the raspberries, weeded around the currant bushes, and dug over one of the beds.

In this first cleared bed we are planning on planting onions, garlic and carrots.. but wondered if anyone has any tips/advice as to whether this is the right thing. We were going to add a load of compose to it and mix it in, in order to make the soil better.

I also have a load of potatoes chitting at home, and some leek seeds just planted in seed compost in a propagator at home.

Any other advice for growing on clay soil would also be welcome. We're working on one bed at a time, and also plan to do a raised permanent bed for asparagus (which someone has told me that mixing in sand will help)

Thanks for any advice

Liz

[chris]

Clay is great as it holds onto water and nutrients better. By adding in organic matter you can increase the air pockets, and structure of the soil. Does the site get waterlogged? Depending on what you're growing in whatever area/bed you could add sand, or grit to help drainage, but with a decent structure by the above drainage will improve. There's many threads on clay soil that probably go into a lot of detail (don't know personally, never looked for that info) .

[arpoet]

We grow on clay and its damned hard sometimes. Deep root crops like snips and carrots are a waste of time so we grow them in raised beds..
Tatties are a great way break it all up and if you can get some well rotted hos muck in the trench first you should get a good crop.
The bottom bed is covered in hos muck, shreaded paper and spent hops and i will plough it all in before planting the spuds.
Good luck
Roger