Hi,

I have just had my garden landscaped (removing a massive terrace full of rubble), however its now down to faintly yellow looking clay, all the black soil on top has gone. It reminds me of the stuff I used at school to make pots out of!

Having read about how to improve the soil to make it suitable for lawn/veg/flowers, the answer appears to be I need to add a lot of organic matter to it, and not work it when wet! (?)

I am new to gardening, and am now confused about the various types of compost available, and what is best to use;

Organic Compost (Screened to 10mm/20mm)
"Compost"
Soil Conditioner
Well Rotted Farm Yard Manure
Various ground up bark/wood products some of which seem to be marketed as peat replacement.

Any help and advice would be appreciated.



(Also if anyone knows a good cheap supplier for these things as I think I need a lorry load!)

On Thu, 24 May 2012 13:55:16 +0000, nb-
wrote:


Hi,

I have just had my garden landscaped (removing a massive terrace full of
rubble), however its now down to faintly yellow looking clay, all the
black soil on top has gone. It reminds me of the stuff I used at school
to make pots out of!

Having read about how to improve the soil to make it suitable for
lawn/veg/flowers, the answer appears to be I need to add a lot of
organic matter to it, and not work it when wet! (?)

I am new to gardening, and am now confused about the various types of
compost available, and what is best to use;

Organic Compost (Screened to 10mm/20mm)
"Compost"
Soil Conditioner
Well Rotted Farm Yard Manure
Various ground up bark/wood products some of which seem to be marketed
as peat replacement.

Any help and advice would be appreciated.



(Also if anyone knows a good cheap supplier for these things as I think
I need a lorry load!)

Is a lorry load the same as a shit load?

On Thu, 24 May 2012 09:13:53 -0700, Billy
wrote:

In article ,
nb- wrote:

Hi,

I have just had my garden landscaped (removing a massive terrace full of
rubble), however its now down to faintly yellow looking clay, all the
black soil on top has gone. It reminds me of the stuff I used at school
to make pots out of!

Having read about how to improve the soil to make it suitable for
lawn/veg/flowers, the answer appears to be I need to add a lot of
organic matter to it, and not work it when wet! (?)

I am new to gardening, and am now confused about the various types of
compost available, and what is best to use;

Organic Compost (Screened to 10mm/20mm)
"Compost"
Soil Conditioner
Well Rotted Farm Yard Manure
Various ground up bark/wood products some of which seem to be marketed
as peat replacement.

Any help and advice would be appreciated.

Your garden soil shouldn't be more than 5% organic material.

Garden soil should be 30% - 40% sand, 30% - 40% silt, and 20% - 30%
clay. You can check your soil by scraping away the organic material on
top of the ground and then take a vertical sample of your soil to 12 in.
(30 cm) deep (rectangular or circular hole). Mix this with water in an
appropriately large glass (transparent) jar. The sand will settle out
quickly, the silt in a couple of hours, and the clay within a day. The
depth of the layer in relationship to the total (layer/total = % of
composition) is the percent that fraction has in the soil.

Garden soil needs a constant input of nutrients, i.e. carbon, e.g. brown
leaves, and nitrogen, e.g. manure in a ratio of C/N of 25. This is the
same ratio you will what in a compost pile.
-----

Let it Rot!: The Gardener's Guide to Composting (Third Edition)
(Storey's Down-to-Earth Guides)
by Stu Campbell

http://www.amazon.com/Let-Rot-Compos...580170234/ref=
sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1294901182&sr=1-1

p.39

Compostable Material Average C/N

Alder or ash leaves ............................ 25

Grass clippings ................................ 25

Leguminous plants (peas,
beans,soybeans) ............................. 15

Manure with bedding ........................... 23

Manure ....................................... 15

Oak leaves .................................... 50

Pine needles .............................. 60-100

Sawdust................................. 150-500

Straw, cornstalks and cobs .................. 50-100

Vegetable trimmings ........................... 25
Aged Chicken Manure**........................* 7
Alfalfa ................................................ 12
Newspaper...................................... .. 175
-----

http://www.composting101.com/c-n-ratio.html

A Balancing Act (Carbon-to-Nitrogen Ratios)


All organic matter is made up of substantial amounts of carbon (C)
combined with lesser amounts of nitrogen (N). The balance of these two
elements in an organism is called the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio (C:N
ratio). For best performance, the compost pile, or more to the point the
composting microorganisms, require the correct proportion of carbon for
energy and nitrogen for protein production. Scientists (yes, there are
compost scientists) have determined that the fastest way to produce
fertile, sweet-smelling compost is to maintain a C:N ratio somewhere
around 25 to 30 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen, or 25-30:1. If the C:N
ratio is too high (excess carbon), decomposition slows down. If the C:N
ratio is too low (excess nitrogen) you will end up with a stinky pile.
(cont.)
------

No reason to till after the first preparation of the garden (no reason
to till the first/last time but it does speed up soil development).
Spread out your soil amendments:
€ N:
€ 18.37 lb. chicken manure/ 100 sq.ft. (2.88 oz/sq.ft.)
€
€ P:
€ 3 lb. / 100/sq.ft. (.48 oz/sq.ft.)
€
€ K:
€ How much wood ash should you use in your garden? The late Bernard
G. Wesenberg, a former Washington State University Extension
horticulturist, recommended using one gallon of ashes per square
yard on loam to clay-loam soil, and half as much on sandier soils.

http://www.plantea.com/manure.htm
€ Manure Chicken Diary cow Horse Steer Rabbit
€ N 1.1 .257 .70 .70 2.4
€ P .80 .15 .30 .30 1.4
€ K .50 .25 .60 .40 .60

€
Sheep Alfalfa Fish Emulsion
€ N .70 3 5
€ P .30 1 1
€ K .90 2 1

€ Sources: Rodale's All-New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, An
Illustrated Guide to Organic Gardening, by Sunset Publishing, and the
Rodale Guide to Composting.

Cover this with newspaper (to block light from weeds and provide a
barrier to sprouting weeds). Cover the newspaper with mulch (up to 6" in
depth). Spray the garden bed with water, and wait 6 weeks before
planting (if you can).

A dibble can help with planting. The dinky little ones from the nursery
may be of some help, but I prefer a sharpened, old, shovel handle for
making a hole through the mulch and paper for planting seedlings.

Adding drip lines takes a little time, but saves a lot of time during
the season.

That's all I know.

Seems I was correct... a lorry load IS the same as a shit load... and
here you just got a major lorry load of billy goat shit! LOL-LOL

On Thu, 24 May 2012 13:55:16 +0000, nb-
wrote:


Hi,

I have just had my garden landscaped (removing a massive terrace full of
rubble),

Sounds as if you may need to re-terrace. If so, perhaps raised beds
could form your new terraces.

Having read about how to improve the soil to make it suitable for
lawn/veg/flowers, the answer appears to be I need to add a lot of
organic matter to it, and not work it when wet! (?)
Well, not when WET and not when DRY. IME, working soil when it's
MOIST is the best time to do it - clay will be like a brick if dry,
and will really gum things up if wet. With other soils, dry can lead
to loads of airborne dust.

I am new to gardening, and am now confused about the various types of
compost available, and what is best to use;

I have limited experience with clay - I know it's down underneath our
yard soil like 3 feet or so (deep enough not to be a concern for my
gardening efforts, but shallow enough that I've run into it when
trenching utilities). We have sandy loam where I'm at, and the other
side of town, where my in-laws live, they've got adobe (which is a
form of clay).

Each year, my mother in law would work multiple bags of soil mix into
her little patch of garden space to grow tomatoes, and the following
year, it'd have incorporated into the adobe. A few years ago, I
constructed her a couple of large (4x8 foot) raised beds with a thick,
water-permeable fabric on the bottom. The plan was to fill them up
with a compost/soil mix trailered in from my property (each would
require about 1 cubic yard to fill), but a neighbour of them ordered a
bunch of compost and soil mix for their yard and wheelbarrowed over
enough to fill one. After several years, that soil level has receeded
(as the compost in it completed breaking down), but it has remained
friable because it isn't being mixed with the underlying adobe.


I'm a huge fan of organic compost (not just "organic" in terms of it
being organic matter, but organic as in pesticide free, etc). I $#!t
you not, little over an hour ago, I had a semi-trailer dumptruck
unload a pile of organic compost into my garden. Depending upon your
access to the space, just burying it with organic compost and soil
mixtures is probably your best bet.


Organic Compost (Screened to 10mm/20mm)
"Compost"

All sorts of sources for "compost". If you have, as we call them in
the US, "green bins" for yardwaste, your municipal waste handler
probably processes them into compost, and may be anm affordable
supplier of it. Around here, we have three waste bins: grey for
debris, blue for recyclables (paper/glass/metal/plastic), and green
for compostable yardwaste. The latter two are diverted from heading
to the landfill and are processed. Many of the local landscape supply
yards sell composted soil mixes which they're actually obtaining from
the municipal waste processor and just marking up.

Besides composted horse manure and shavings I get from a local stable,
I buy trailerloads of duck manure and rice hull compost from a large
and 100 year old duck farm. By its nature, the stuff is fine, and
greatly improves water permeation and moisture retention in the soil
(though our sandy loam does a fine job of holding moisture actually,
water has a tendancy to bead up on the surface above all the fines --
till in a load of this compost, and it turns into a massive sponge.

Soil Conditioner
This could be any number of things.

Well Rotted Farm Yard Manure
This will be your cheapest source of organic material, but by itself
won't make a good planting medium.

Various ground up bark/wood products some of which seem to be marketed
as peat replacement.
Take a pass. Okay for pathway stuff, but ground up wood is in effect
"carbon", and in order to complete it's compost cycle, will lock up
nitrogen from your soil. I get wood chips in 8-15 cubic yard loads
from local tree services - they do a job somewhere, and want to get
rid of the wood chips. It's good as a mulch for pathways and borders,
but I don't like it in the garden proper (and as I tractor-till the
whole garden space when I amend, "pathways" in the garden are only
temporary from season to season).

Decide if you're putting in a lawn, landscaping, or growing veggies -
the soil needs (workable depth and surface cover for instance) will
vary. If looking to lanscape (pockets of plants here and there) and
just convert the soil over a long time, mixing in wood chips might be
an option. If you want grass, they really won't be (as grass wants
nitrogen).

Whatever your soil type, organic matter (such as homemade compost and leafmould) should be added regularly to improve structure and nutrient content. Organic matter acts as a soil conditioner. It helps to break up heavy clay soils (improving drainage) or it binds together sandy soil (improving retention of water and nutrients). If added once a year, organic matter will improve your soil and overcome any problems associated with texture. Adding organic matter can also slightly lower the pH of the soil (see below) to a level perfect for most vegetables. [Please note: Although manure is commonly recommended for soil-improvement, you need to be aware of a number of issues when using it - please see our GrowBlog article: The Problem with Manure for details.]

Thank you all for your input.

Putting back a new terrace it not really an option as it was half way up the first floor, making the house look like it was in a pit, and a really awkward.

As far as soil amendment goes, it seems;
*Avoid the timber products, especially for lawns (thanks Sean Straw)
*Compost rich in organic matter is the way to go.
*If I am feeling motivated well rotted manure rotavated in is an option
*Then regular mulching / amendment according to plant
*Maybe raised beds that can be filled with the right soil are the way to go.

nb- wrote:

Hi,

I have just had my garden landscaped (removing a massive terrace full of
rubble), however its now down to faintly yellow looking clay, all the
black soil on top has gone. It reminds me of the stuff I used at school
to make pots out of!

sounds like you didn't specify this very well.
when landscaping you shouldn't be left with
something you can't use. the excavator must not
be very ethical. they should have covered this.


Having read about how to improve the soil to make it suitable for
lawn/veg/flowers, the answer appears to be I need to add a lot of
organic matter to it, and not work it when wet! (?)

I am new to gardening, and am now confused about the various types of
compost available, and what is best to use;

Organic Compost (Screened to 10mm/20mm)
"Compost"
Soil Conditioner
Well Rotted Farm Yard Manure
Various ground up bark/wood products some of which seem to be marketed
as peat replacement.

Any help and advice would be appreciated.



(Also if anyone knows a good cheap supplier for these things as I think
I need a lorry load!)

how large an area?


songbird