Hi guys,
This is my first post and I'll confess from the start I'm new to gardening!
I have a garden in hull that is made entirely of clay and is a swamp all winter and looks like the surface of the moon as soon as the sun comes out. A couple of years ago I dug a soakaway trench the full lenghth of the garden and about five feet down you get to the sand underneath. We then back filled this with sea gravel and crushed brick and top soil and so we have a three foot wide strip that doesn't flood anymore but the rest of the garden is unchanged.so we weeded it out all the dandelions brambles and dock leaves bought tones of chipped bark and covered it all over to give our little one somewhere to play. The bark is now breaking down and my wife wants a lawn so I have been looking into conditioning the soil which has brought me here. The clay is really acidic so I'm looking at using garden lime rotivated in along with the bark that's already there. then was going to put a few tonns of gravel and sharp sand down and rotating that in and then dressing with top soil and either seeding or turfing the whole lot!
Does this sound like it makes sense or would it be wise to do something else?
And what sort of ratio sand gravel soil would work best? I was thinking pretty much equal amounts of each but would love some advice!
This plan has come from searching the Internet which as we all know is 20% wrong and 80% porn so this may all be completely ridiculous. Thanks for your help and advise
Paul

If you cannot drain it what other choice do you have. See if a friend knows an engineer so he can take a look to see if you can drain it off someway that you may not see before you go to the expense of amending the soil. Amending the topsoil is one thing but what about the sub soil? Water will still stand especially after a storm.

On Apr 27, 3:38*am, Jinjah wrote:
Hi guys,
This is my first post and I'll confess from the start I'm new to
gardening!.......

Your overall plan doesn't sound too bad but having a good soil test
done prior will guide you much better. The test should give you
specific advice on the fertilization protocol for your particular
plants/soil, as well as recommendation of type, quantity, etc of
minerals for liming. Lot of reasons for this such as whether you will
need calcitic and dolomitic lime. Anything you do should be based
off of this test. I'm sure you can find a lab close to you. A good
test here in the US is ~ 13-15$. Its cheap at twice the price.

BTW billy: 4-10% OM is considered acceptable limits