If the soil in your garden is so sticky when wet that it clings onto your boots and garden fork, then in summer dries to form a concrete-hardened crust, then you’ve got clay. But don’t despair, because clay soils are generally very fertile and can support fabulous looking gardens if you know how to tame them. The key is to adapt your gardening to the soil, rather than go head-to-head in a battle you cannot win. Use cunning and guile to make the most of the advantages clay offers by follow our six golden rules:
Rule 1: don’t walk on your soil – always work from short planks to help spread your weight. This will help prevent damaging the fragile soil structure.
Rule 2: lay down polythene – cover areas you want to dig to help dry them out and be adaptable so that you are able to carry out any cultivation tasks when the soil is workable.
Rule 3: dig in bulky organic matter – apply as much well-rotted manure and garden compost as humanly possible. This will help improve the soil structure and improve drainage.
Rule 4: select the right plants – choose plants that are particularly well adapted to growing in clay soil without assistance (see below).
Rule 5: plant in spring or early autumn – late autumn and winter planting is more difficult and new plants are more likely to fail. Summer planting is impossible.
Rule 6: mulch each spring – top-up the organic matter in planted areas by mulching in spring. Apply 10cm deep around permanent plants such as trees and shrubs.
If you want to grow vegetables, consider installing a raised bed to help improve drainage and warm the soil for early spring sowing and planting.
Six flowers to try:
Ligularia ‘Britt Marie Crawford’
Rudbeckia laciniata ‘Goldquelle’
Six shrubs to try:
Abelia × grandiflora ‘Francis Mason’
Elaeagnus × ebbingei ‘Limelight’
I improved a prominent border in my heavy clay soil by digging in loads of grit when I was renovating the garden – several centimeters over the whole bed all forked in – hard work but worth it!
If you have clay soil, the good news is that it is possible to make it more gardener-friendly by adding lots of organic matter.
My old gardening friend says that calcium in the form of lime or gypsum when added to clay binds the particles together to form larger aggregates. He says to use lime on acid clays because it will help neutralise it too, and gypsum on other clays because it won’t alter the pH. No idea where you get gypsum from, but lime is sold by most garden centres I think.
Try ridge digging clay soils to expose the maximum surface area to the weathering effects of the frost. This will break up large clods and improve structure, drainage and workability. A lot of hard work in the first few years but ultimately worthwhile – provided you don’t move house of course!
And another thing, I agree with Merv add as much organic matter as you can afford – ideally a half a barrowload per square meter.
I think I will add some mulch or topsoil to the surface of my soil because it’s a horrible unsightly orange colour. I don;t really like chipped bark because it’ll make my garden look like a border on an industrial estate. What I would really like to achive is very close planting so that no coil is visible between the grasses/astrania/iris etc. Similar to Tom Stuart Smith’s Chelsea gardens of the last 5 years or so.