working with red clay soils

[diamond h]

I thought I might share my secrets of working with red clay soil because it can be a real challenge for us in the south.

Red clay can be hard as a brick if not worked properly.

My first suggestion for working a new area that is red clay is to plow in the fall before plan to garden in the spring.

After plowing disk the ground in the spring before planting. Do not disk if the ground is wet. Check for mositure by trying to make a ball from the soil. If it will ball up without falling apart it is too wet. It should crumble when ready to disk.

After disking add organic material such as well aged compost, manure, and rotten leaves. I use manure that has age approximately three years. After spreading a two to three inch layer of the organic material disk the area again to incorporate the matter. You could also use a tiller to do this step if you want.

You can then plant as you wish. After your plants have come up mulch well with rotted wood chips. These will be plowed into the soil during the fall.

During the first year you will still encounter some difficulty with the soil--crusting and hard clods but by the second year you will great soil if you continue the same procedure.

BTW my username comes from a set of cap guns my great grandfather bought me for Christmas in 1969.

[haypoint]

I, too have experience with red clay soil. but, my place gets 100 inches of snow that covers the ground from mid-November to mid-April, is often too wet to be on from Labor Day to Thanksgiving and again from Easter to Memorial Day.
Fall plowing allows for the freeze/thaw to break up the clay and make it easier to disk smooth in the Spring. But it also opens up the soil to erosion from the melting snow and spring rains.
Often there is a window of opportunity to plant a crop in late May or early June. Miss it and you may wait until July to plant.
July and August are often dry. Too dry to plow.
This clay has a low PH. Bring the PH up with 6 ton of lime per acre and you'll have wonderful crops until the PH drops again.

I have a 12 foot rototiller and a 150 horse tractor that can make a seedbed in two passes over thick sod/clay in dry weather. It goes slow, but 4 or 5 passes with a disk is slow going, too.

[Danaus29]

My brother had those Diamond H cap guns too. He slept with his on for weeks after he got them.

The same rules and tips apply to the brown clay we call soil here. I don't use wood chips for mulch, too hard to come by unless you buy them from the store. (we use a wood stove for heat, even little twigs get burned) Cardboard works well to cover walkways and is easily kept in place by putting grass clippings on top. I use all the leaves I can get, shredded with the mower and piled up to partially decompose through the winter, worked into the soil in the spring.

[Buckhuntr]

In a previous life back in the red clay of NW Georgia, I had access to lots of bark and shavings from sawmills, and some nearby stables for horse manure. I pretty much had the garden in great shape when I got divorced and lost it.