Soil holding too much water

[ameno]

I'm having some trouble at the moment on my new allotment with very wet and sticky soil.
It's not a drainage problem, per se. Water isn't puddling or pooling, and there isn't a high water table (hell, my plot's on a hill, so most of the excess water just flows away). Rather, the soil itself holds too much water. It just holds onto it like a sponge.
It makes it very hard to dig (and unfortunately I don't have the time to just wait until spring), and I'm concerned it may even rot the roots of some plants. I have just today applied sharp sand and plenty of spent hops to areas where I plan to plant some fruit trees, and I also plan on digging in some used compost and some powered up plaster board (i.e. gypsum) when I plant the trees, but does anyone else with similar soil have tips for dealing with it?

Honestly, I've never dealt with its like before. Makes me realise I've probably been spoilt by the soil in my garden, which is always easy to work in all weathers and seasons. The allotment is 3 minutes walk up the road, and yet it is so different...

[nickdub]

My best advice would be to have a word with other allotment holders on the same site. Soil conditions as you observe are very local - and so good advice for one place, often doesn't work too well in another one.

[Nicos]

You can't really confront what is 'normal' for your plot.
Our very first allotment was heavy clay soil and we finally gave up trying to challenge its growing conditions. Once Mid May appeared it blossomed! Too late to grow for local for local veg competitions, but it produced massive amounts well into winter.
Go with it.... it might surprise you

[Martin H]

Ah the joys of clay soil!

I'm afraid all you can do just now is stay off it until it dries out enough so that it doesn't stick to your boots. Like us, you've had an unusual amount of rain over there lately but it won't last forever.

Look on the bright side: once it's soaked up enough organic matter, clay makes wonderfully fertile soil, just like Monty Don's. You just need to keep spreading as much organic stuff as you can on the top and let the worms dig it in for you.

You can add sand as well if you want, but don't use sand on its own without organic matter because clay + sand = concrete. Also you need an awful lot of sand to have any impact. If you have access to lots of spent hops, or hedge trimmings, or anything really, just keep spreading it and plant through it once the weeds are under control. You'll be surprised how quickly you will have nice soil.

[Nicos]

Go with raised beds..(it worked for us

[ameno]

This time of year, it's actually worse after digging it, presumably because the more open structure just allows it to hold more water.
Unfortunately, it's full of bindweed and couch grass and I have bareroot trees to plant, so I have to dig it and have to do it as soon as possible.

Hopefully I might get a spell of several days without rain at some point, and give the soil a chance to dry out.

[Scarlet]

I'm on clay - I would only dig when we've had a spell of dry weather....and then in the Summer mine drys to concrete and will form cracks. So my advice would be to mulch heavily.

[Mark_Riga]

If it were me, I'd heel the trees in at home in the soil you know and hope you get a spell before the spring to prepare for them.

[Penellype]

How big are the trees? Would they plant temporarily in large containers for a year while you prepare the ground properly? With the best will in the world you are not going to remove bindweed and couch grass in one dig, even if the soil is manageable, which yours clearly isn't at present (mine is saturated too). What you need to do is dig out what you can find when you can, then leave it to grow and "declare" itself so that you can dig out what is left. I find typically this takes at least a year from past experience with couch, creeping thistle, bindweed and ground elder, and 2 years and counting with horsetail.

Your alternative would be to plant the trees this winter and accept that they will be infested with couch grass and bindweed, because once the trees are planted you have very little hope of getting it out.

[ameno]

I don't expect to eradicate the weeds. They're in all the grass surrounding the area, after all, so even if I completely remove them from the planting site, they'll spread back in. I just want to remove most of it (as there really is a lot) before planting.
Although the bindweed is actually fairly easy to get rid of, as it pretty much all grows just in the top four inches of soil.

The trees aren't small enough to pot for a year, and even if they were, I'd still rather not lose a year like that. I'd rather just work harder to remove as much weed root as I can, then remove it as I go once the tree is planted.
My garden has plenty of bindweed, so I'm used to dealing with it. If you dig out as much as you can before planting, then mulch it each year and pull out any that regrows. It's usually gone from within the planted area within 3 years, although obviously it can and will spread back in from outside.

[Snoop Puss]

Have the weeds set seed? If not, how about not digging but just pulling them up and piling them on top of the soil in such a way that the roots can't re-root? Deep mulch, potentially, and the soil will eventually wash off the roots and back into the ground.

I'm really hoping this will work, as I'm struggling with grasses (oats, barley, wheat whatever the local farmers have been sowing over the years). If I weed but just leave the surface clear, there are about a billion more seeds just waiting to grow. So I've been pulling the grass out but just plonking it back on top. It might take ages to break down, but more organic matter that I don't have to wheelbarrow in.

I'm not doing this with anything that has set seed.

[ameno]

It's not those sorts of annual weeds which are bothering me. Those are easy to remove. It's pernicious perennials, like bindweed, couch grass and horsetail.

[Nicos]

Darn. Those are really hard to get rid of!

[Greenleaves]

If you have marestail, learn to live with it. IMO all you can do is keep digging

[bikermike]

I suspect your basic problem is that Somerset is full of water. Even if you make the soil more amenable to drainage, it'll just have nowhere to go.

In terms of digging out marestail etc, cover it and dig it at your leisure. You won't get rid of it in one season anyway.