"Duncan Tuna" wrote in message
...
Our backyard garden has bad dirt. It's amazing how it can rain, yet 24
hours later, the soil is dry and cracked.

I'm thinking of renting a tiller this spring and improve the soil. What
should I mix in to improve the soil? Peat? Peat moss? Compost?
Something
else?

Thanks!




Aside from dry what is your soil like? Does it have rocks, sand, clay, some
mix of these? What colour is it? If you wet it with a hose does it drain
in an hour or two or turn to sticky mud?

As others have said organic matter is mostly what you need. Peat moss is
very expensive and not that useful in this context. If you had enough money
to do a whole yard with peat you would be better off giving a big cheque to
a landscaper and telling them to fix it. Tilling in itself will not do much
unless you also improve the texture. Tilling can make it worse in some
situations as you can bring up the crap the builder buried or just nasty
subsoil that is worse than your topsoil.

You need to find a cheap (you will need a lot) local (you don't want to pay
big $$ for cartage) source of organic material. Unless your yard is very
small think in terms of truckloads not bags. Some ideas:

- Some local (municipal) authorities compost all the trimmings from their
parks etc and sell the compost very cheaply to ratepayers.
- Stables (ask at the racecourse) may sell you horse manure or stable
sweepings cheaply or even give it away.
- Local farms or feedlots may have cheap material: manure, spoiled hay,
straw, hulls, spent mushroom compost etc
- Don't forget to compost your own grass-clippings, plant trimmings and vege
peelings.

David