Clay Soil...

What would you do to grow vegetables in clay soil.

  • raised beds

    Votes: 5 100.0%
  • modify the soil

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    5

Don Bolles

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Feb 7, 2020
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Location
Mint Hill, NC USA (zone 7B)
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Hello Mark and Everyone! I started watching your videos to gain more information about container gardens and raised bed gardening. I live in Charlotte, NC USA and our soil is a hard red clay and while it will grow trees, fruit and other varieties. our vegetable crops suffer from the poor soil.

I had thought about getting a truck full of sand or other soil and tilling it into our clay, but was told that container gardening would be easier, more productive and probably less expensive. Any advice, comments or thoughts would be welcome to help me fix this dilemma.

Don
 

CraftyTera

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Feb 7, 2020
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Temperate (all seasons)
My grandmother was an excellent gardener. She said her soil was all clay when she started but adding compost helped a lot. It may not be the ideal solution since she added compost every year for many years. I don't know how long it took to get the excellent soil she had.
 

Mark

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G'day Don and thanks for joining SSC!

It's a shame because clay usually has lots of great nutrients locked up in it but the only real way to amend clay is to add in organic matter - often sand and lighter soils only work for a short time and then the problem is back. Organic matter such as compost helps to break up the clay at the micro-level not just through aeration but it can take time and a lot of work.

Raised beds are far easier :)
 

Lucas

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St Andrews, Victoria
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Hi Don
I come from an area with poor soil and use raised beds
I find there are easy to amend and water
Their free draining unlike the natural soil and vegetables love it
Found an old water tank last week and cut it into another 3 raised beds
83865023_10157111902882857_3436459464457191424_n.jpg
 

Shari Powell

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Feb 8, 2020
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3
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Temperate (all seasons)
I'm in south west Missouri. Our ground is rock and clay. I worked on amending our soul for about 5 years with little progress. We finally decided to put in a raised garden area and I'm so glad we did. If our ground was partly or even mostly clay, we probably would have had better luck. But because it is all clay and rock it felt futile.
 
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