Hello gardening friends welcome to Backyard Basics.
A lot of new gardeners are out there, thousands and thousands of people are gardening for
the first time and they are growing vegetables that's for sure but a lot of them are putting
in the flowerbeds.
And many of us have to deal with the heavy clay soil you know they make bricks out of
it and or clay pots out of it.
It's really hard to dig in and when it's wet you walk across it you come out a little bit
taller on the other side.
You know that clay soil right there.
But you can fix it and you can garden in that spot without introducing some more soil.
So today I'm going to show you a few of the soil amendments that I like to use to help
open up that soil, bring some life to it, get it to drain well and you can grow anything
out there at that point.
Some of the things that I like to use, this is a little bit of a pea gravel, right here,
a little bit smaller that a pea gravel, but look at that.
That's a beautiful little product it's got a lot of texture to it and that's what you
are going to need and you would use a generous amount of it when you are in the garden out
there.
Not just a little bit but a least three inches of this on top of the bed then you try to
work it in about eight or ten inches but put a generous amount in there.
That's very, very important so this is a very good little product not impossible to find
and I like it a lot.
It really does open up the soil.
Another one that is available quite a bit is this decomposed granite sand.
Now it's pretty good.
I think I would maybe screen it a little bit but it has a lot of texture in there, it has
a lot of small stones.
And once again about a three-inch layer on top of the garden bed and working it in very,
very nicely is important.
And that means down to another eight or ten inches so a generous amount of this and this
brings minerals in too so it's a real neat little product.
And it's locally available; you know that's important when we are looking for sustainable
gardens.
We're looking for products that come from our immediate area and so this granite sand
does.
You've probably seen this on the paths here and there.
It can compact down so you want to put it very well mixed in to your soil.
This is a way to fix that heavy clay soil.
Very nice product and a lot of people use this one because it is widely available.
Another thing you are going to need to add whenever you are opening the soil up is some
good compost.
This is a dairy compost right here, the dairy compost seems to be the one that lasts the
longest in the soil.
All of the proteins have been removed by the cattle and so it doesn't break down so easily
anymore.
I mean cows, and so this is a good little product.
It will have some nutrients in, some life in it; we need that life in the soil.
That's very, very important thing, that's one of the goals in repairing that heavy clay
soil is to bring a lot of live to it because the microorganisms that are in there will
secrete a glue like substance.
And they live in the air, they really need some important air in there, they are not
anaerobic organisms and so you really need to open it up.
And that glue like substance that they excrete binds the particles of clay together into
a really nice tilth.
So this an important addition to this whole thing.
This right here is expanded shale, Texas A&M did a lot of research and the Arboretum up
in Dallas; there are a lot of folks using this right here.
It's a Texas product, it's shale, it's a little over sixty-five million years old, it's been
around here a long time and does not break down.
This is the stuff that's been sitting around here for the past sixty-five million, at the
end of the dinosaur age.
This stuff was deposited in the soil when Texas was a huge lake.
And so this is expanded shale and so this works very, very well and stays there forever.
It's not going to go anywhere.
The next million years that you are gardening in that spot it's going to drain very, very
well.
This is known as expanded shale and it's really porous.
It really is nice and open.
So one of the other characteristics of this you can use it in a sandy soil.
So in a heavy clay soil it will provide the drainage and in a sandy soil it will hold
moisture.
It's very, very porous.
I understand it's nearly thirty-eight percent of the weight of each stone here in moisture.
Really nice way to do it, expanded shale this is probably except for the compost these two
things would be my best choices.
Especially in some of those sandy soils.
It's important to feed this kind of a soil.
Bringing that life around there means everything.
There are many soil activators on the market and that's what soil activators do.
They feed the micro organisms that are in the soil and that'll open it up and you'll
have a beautiful garden after you do this.
For Backyard Basics I'm John Dromgoole, I'll see you next time.