Billy blathered:
�Phisherman wrote:
Paul Tiwana wrote:

I hv clay in the soil. It keeps the soil wet and cold
any rememedy ?

Incorporate compost into the soil. �It will enrich the soil with the
benefit of adding organic material and better drainage.

Also how to enrich the soil when it is dry,
Does bone meal fertizer any help in the early stage, or peat moss ?
Plz suggest s good fertilizer.
I h a v small garden, ie, 10 X 16 feet only

Please adivise

What kind and amount of fertilizer depends on the plant and your soil
test results. �

Lots of compost and organic material, steer manure, and about
50 cubic feet of sand, if you only turn over the top foot of soil.
Figure that you want a third of your soil to be sand. One foot
down would make it about 1/3 of 160 cubic feet, a foot and a half
would be 1/3 of about 240 cubic feet, and two feet would be 1/3 of
320 cubic feet for hard clay.

If two feet down he's still into clay there still won't be drainage...
all you're creating is a two foot deep mud pit. Now you've put him in
a far worse situation had he done nothing... he just buried triple the
double of the same sized raised bed garden, and has nothing but a big
fat sloppy mess to show for it. Clayey soils with pooling water are
the primary reason raised bed gardens were invented.

A 10' X 16' X 30" volume requires like 15 cubic yards of top soil...
around here that truckload of really high quality organically enriched
topsoil would run like $400 delivered. Pressure treated lumber and
fasteners for that size raised bed garden would also run about $400...
doing the labor oneself, not all that difficult, for under a grand he
could have a gorgeous raised bed garden, and guaranteed to work, and
work well... and if the ground below is typically wet he'll rarely
need to water.

Why would any sane person want to dig a 160 sq ft pit two feet deep,
in clay by hand... need a couple trained gorillas...hiring someone
with a backhoe and to take away the clay, and to repair the damage
made by the backhoe and dump truck could easily cost about a grand...
and then all you have is a wet mucky hole... first heavy rain the poor
guy will have a pond... oh V-8 head slap, a water garden, gonna grow
mosquitos, wtf didn't you say so. G