Maintenance Tips For Improving Clay Soil
Once youve done the hard work of improving your clay soil, it might be tempting to just sit back and enjoy it. However, if you dont do a few maintenance tricks, it will eventually end up reverting back to the way it was.
Here are the top ways to keep improving your soil every year:
- Topdress soil each year with organic matter Always remember that organic matter is the key to improving clay soil! When you first amended your soil, you should have worked the organic material about a foot deep into your soil. Maintaining your soil is easier because all you need to do is apply a 1-3 inch layer of organic matter on top of your soil every year. No need to work it in, but keep regularly applying it!
- Avoid tilling and compacting your soil Compacting your soil is a major problem if youre dealing with clay. It can destroy years of hard work spent improving soil texture. Tilling may seem like it aerates soil, but it actually leads to more compaction because youre breaking up the soil structure.
Tilling may seem like it loosens your soil up, but it actually leads to more compaction. After the first time you work amendments deep into the soil, avoid tilling and walking on garden areas to avoid compaction.
After working your amendments deep into the soil the first time around, avoid tilling and walking on your soil as much as possible. Try a minimal or no-till gardening system to keep your clay soil improving.
Why Drilling Holes In Your Lawn Improves Soil
If you have read about, lawn aeration, composting, and creating worm bins then you understand the basic principles that are being used with this process.
You are essentially reducing compaction and replacing small sections of your soil with nutrient-rich matter. This matter breaks down encouraging beneficial microbes in your soil. As the matter decomposes, its nutrients are released into the ground.
Additionally, by drilling holes in your lawn and filling them with organic matter, you are encouraging earthworms to enter and begin breaking down the matter. The worms then move into the clay and deposit their castings, improving the condition of the nearby soil.
Drilling Holes In Clay Soil: Shocking 2 Year Results
I had heard for years that you can improve the condition of clay soil by drilling holes in a lawn. I didnt believe it. Im skeptical by nature. But Im always ready to put something to the test if only to disprove a myth.
I may have been wrong about this one.
If you have been considering this unorthodox method of improving drainage in your yard, you will want to read this article and watch the video Ive included showing the results of this two year study.
Does drilling holes in clay soil improve drainage? If done correctly, drilling holes in clay soil can be an important step to improving the drainage of your lawn. The holes help to accelerate the natural conditioning of the clay when appropriate organic matter is added as well as allowing water to drain through to better soil below.
Now I know that information on this topic is controversial. I realize that the subject is very polarizing with people standing firm on both ends of the spectrum swearing that their position is factual. Lets put that aside for a second and focus on what really matters whether or not it works.
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Growing Grass In Clay Soil
Written by Mark··· This post may contain affiliate links. Read more ->
You can grow grass in clay soil if you use these methods to improve soil drainage and overall soil health.
Growing grass in clay soil can be done if you use a variety of methods to improve the clay soil. These methods include adding organics and soil conditioners as well as mechanical methods such as core aerating and top dressing.
If youre serious about improving your clay soil then you need to use most of, if not all of these methods. It may take several repeat efforts to build soil structure that is a healthy mix of sand, silt, clay, minerals, and organic matter that make up the ideal soil, or loam, for growing a healthy lawn.
Do Not Step In The Soil For Sometime
Clay soil tends to become compact in areas where there is heavy usage of the foot. It is better to stay away from the lawn. Avoid excess mowing of the lawn, especially when the ground is wet. You can instead lay stepping stones or create sidewalks or make a path so that you can walk without stepping on the soil.
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How Do You Break Down Clay Soil Quickly
Breaking down hard soil will improve its structure, making planting and digging easier.
So, how can you do it?
Breaking down clay soil will take a lot of digging, but it will make the soil more workable and suitable for growing grass and other plants,
1) Cover the lawn with about eight inches of organic matter. It can be anything that has not been treated with toxic compounds or chemicals, including lawn cuttings, rotted manure, or compost from your heap.
2) You can carry out this step over several days, as it is the most difficult part of the treatment process. Dig the prepared organic matter into the top layer of your clay soil, but be careful not to compact it.
3) You can use either a rotavator or a sturdy spade for digging. When you have finished improving your soil, the garden bed may become a few inches higher, but it will settle down over time.
3) Add some extra inches of organic matter each year. The worms that live in the soil will take it down into the clay, improving the soil.
Improve Clay Soil Drainage With Raised Beds
There are several ways to improve the drainage of your clay soil. Raised beds are a good way to improve clay soil.
A raised bed is a quick and effective way to improve the drainage of your soil. Another option is to plant more plants on top of the soil.
In order to get the best results, you need to choose a solution that works best for your garden. You can use a combination of methods to improve clay soil.
The organic matter will also improve the drainage of your clay soil. You can even grow plants in the soil if you add a few organic materials.
If you dont have a lot of space for a garden, you can use a compost bin to keep the soil moist. You should also add some organic matter on top of the soil to avoid compaction.
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When Your Clay Soil Wont Drain
Cultural management is sometimes all thats needed to solve a problem with clay soil drainage. Growing in raised beds is sometimes the simplest solution. Construct low walls of wooden planks, bricks or stone and fill them with soil mixed with compost, or mound up the soil for your beds so that its several inches higher than the surrounding ground. Dont build beds that are too wide to reach into the middle comfortably.
Adding plenty of organic matter also helps with drainage by improving soil structure and water infiltration. Spread a layer of compost, leaf mold, or aged manure 3 to 4 inches deep over your planting beds in fall or spring, and dig the organic matter in to a depth of 4 to 6 inches. Alternatively, spread a mulch of wood chips, sawdust or bark chippings on the soil surface, and they will eventually disappear into the soil naturally.
Growing cover crops helps to improve drainage in heavy clay. Cover crops are plants that are grown to improve the soil condition by increasing the proportion of decaying plant material. Borage , and timothy hay , hardy in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 4 through 8, are two cover crops that can be sown in fall and dug into the soil in spring.
What Are Strategies To Improve Soil Drainage For Water
If youre attempting to cope with excessive water in your garden, here are some strategies you can use to get rid of water-logged soil.
Plant cover crops
When you plant cover crops, you use excess water, which is good for soil health.
They essentially keep your garden from turning into a giant mud puddle.
To use this method, plant a winter cover crop throughout your garden next fall or in places youre not immediately trying to plant in the spring.
The cover crop will use excess water as the plants grow and eventually add organic material to the soil, which helps with drainage.
Eliminate tilling
This is a longer-term strategy that helps improve soil structure because it no longer is compacted by equipment.
This allows plants, insects, and fungi to create air spaces in the soil.
Add organic material
As noted above, you can never go wrong when adding organic material!
It improves fertility and increases drainage.
Organic material can also help dry soil hold moisture.
Include subsoil
Subsoil lifts the soil without mixing it or turning it over.
This helps to leave the soil structure intact and creates drainage soils in the soil, which helps to improve drainage.
Large farms often do this with a tractor and chisel plow or subsoiler.
In a smaller garden, you can do it with a broad fork.
Build raised beds
Building raised beds is a quick solution that can help you create areas of good drainage.
Just keep that in mind!
Consider sand
Not worth it!
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Top Dressing With Compost
After core aerating, top dress your lawn with compost. Core aeration combined with top dressing with compost is by far the best two things you can do to improve clay soil problems in an existing lawn. If you are only going to take two steps to fix your clay problems, then choose core aeration and top dressing.
The way it works is simple. The voids that are left over after core aerating get filled with compost. The compost also gets raked all over the surface of your lawn about a 1/4 thick. This is the best way to introduce a ton of organic matter into your soil.
If you have a cool season lawn, then after top dressing, take the next step and apply a starter fertilizer and a light seeding with a quality seed .
If you have a warm season lawn then you shouldnt need to seed since most warm season lawns spread via rhizomes and/or stolons and will naturally fill in. Check out more on top dressing your lawn here: Top Dressing Lawn: Benefits and Advice.
How To Improve Clay Soil For Lawns Simple Tips
Clay soils can be a big problem if thats what you have under your lawn.
These dense, compacted soils provide poor drainage, staying soggy when wet and turning rock hard in the summer.
Moreover, nutrients, air, and water cannot easily move through clay soils.
It creates stress on the roots of the grass, making them weak and more prone to weeds, insects, and disease.
So, how to improve clay soil for lawns?
To improve clay soil for lawns and create a good bed for your yard add topsoil or mix in some organic matter such as leaves, rotted manure, or grass clippings. Aerate your lawn to help improve drainage and improve the soil structure. These techniques done consistently will improve your lawn soil over time.
When treated properly, clay soils can actually have great potential and offer many benefits. Healthy, well-maintained clay soil means less stress on your garden or lawn and less work for you. With a little effort, you can improve your heavy clay soil and enjoy its unique features.
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It Is Important To Grow Tolerant Plants
You will come across some great herbs like clivia, hostas, paeonies and daylilies, which like to grow up in the slightly acidic and nutrient heavy clay soils. As a bonus, they are not going to spread things so fast, so there is less requirement of dividing.
Plants like Roses, Hydrangea, Philadelphus, and Viburnum. Including other plants together will help to break up the soil and grow it more friable for the next vegetables without any hassle.
Note: You can also add Gypsum to the clay soil as it comes jam-packed with features. You do not need it every year, but its a good source of increasing salinity in the soil.
How To Improve Drainage In A Clay Soil Lawn
Draining clay soil is a laborious task, that takes time and patience. One way you can go about it is to dig in horticultural coarse grit into the soil. This can help sustain your soil for several years. Another way of improving drainage in clays is by adding garden compost, as that will make it airier. But beware, garden compost usually lasts for around two to three years, after which it begins to rot.
Keep on reading for more tips on drainage improvement in clay soil.
Dig larder holes when plantingAt the end of spring, when its time to sow, dig a hole twice as big as a rootball . Then using a fork, break up the bottom of the hole as to improve the soils drainage.
Sow woody plants on a moundWhen planting woody plants in clay soil, start by creating a mound of soil. Then sow your plants in that mound. This will help improve the drainage.
Aerate and scarify your clay soil lawnMoss and worm casts can harm your clay soil lawn greatly, therefore its important you deal with them quickly. Use a wire rake to remove the thatch off the lawn in autumn, then scarify it using a fork or scarifier. If that seems to you like a lot of work, then you can book our lawn aeration and lawn scarification service.
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How To Improve Heavy Clay Soil
When you wrestle with heavy, compacted clay in your lawn and garden, your body and your plants can show the strain. But don’t despair. Clay soil offers many benefits, but it can need a hand to reach its potential. Healthy, well-maintained clay soil translates to less work for you and less stress on your lawn and garden. With these insights and a little effort, you can fix your heavy clay soil and reap its rewards:
How To Boost Your Clay Soil Drainage
- You are here:
We know how tough it is for those who do not have a soil to grow a plant of their choice, just for a single reason the soil they have does not drain quickly. The crisis depends if somebody has clay soil in his or her kitchen garden. Why do they have a poor drainage?
Well, the reason is layering, which means abrupt changes of the soil layer that makes tough for the water to move inside. Thats what happens with clayey soils. What could be the possible way or how to improve clay soil drainage?
Moreover, clay soil has a bad reputation. In winter, they slowly turn sodden and take a longer time to warm up in the spring season, and by summer, it is already concrete. The fine particles stick so close to each other that it leads to poor aeration and has a poor root growth as well.
To improve the clay soil drainage back breaking and some other expensive suggestions are the way out. It is all about replacing the friable loam. However, it is not the same story for all the gardeners. The clayey soil is rich in nutrients that are not completely lost by leaching and it retains moisture in the dry weather. You just need to do a little bit of research and find out the best way to tackle and boost clay soil drainage.
If you are facing a similar problem like me, then no need to fret. You simply need to treat the soil with the right materials to improve the drainage and help the clay soil to retain the right proportion of water in all seasons.
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Apply A Liquid Seaweed
As mentioned above, its better to use organic feeds on clay soils. And during the height of the Summer, its also recommended to use a liquid feed rather than a granular one. So, liquid seaweed lawn feed is the perfect option. Applying a liquid feed every 4 weeks, will not only help the soil but will also help the lawn turn greener in colour by making the grass blades more healthy.
A liquid Summer feed is particularly useful for lawns that are next to large conifers.
Best Grass For Clay Soil
The best grass for clay soil is Tall Fescue for cool season lawns. Tall fescue has a deep root system and is very strong. It offers strong drought tolerance, and stands up well to the heat and cold. I really like the Black Beauty Original Supreme Grass Seed Blend.
For warm season lawns Bermuda Grass is a great choice for clay soil. Its deep rhizomes make Bermuda grass strong and resilient. Bermuda Grass is a rapid grower and has the ability to spread and fill in bare spots, as long as you keep it properly fed with a good lawn program.
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Add Gypsum To The Clay Soil
Gypsum is naturally occurring calcium sulfate that you can use to break up heavily compacted clay soil in your lawn. When added to the soil, gypsum improves the texture by making the fine particles come together to make larger particles with improved drainage and aeration.
To improve clay soil using gypsum, apply 1 kilogram of gypsum per square meter of your yard and dig it well into the top 15 centimeters. Mix it well so that the soluble calcium can enhance the porosity and aggregation of the clay soils and improve air and water infiltration.
Pro tip: Clay soils are highly nutritious. If you opt to use gypsum to improve the soil for your lawn, avoid applying too much of it. Too much gypsum can eliminate essential nutrients including aluminum, manganese, and iron.
