Building up very Poor clay soil

Time vs. Money.

Doing it nice and slow is great if you have lots of time, and no money... a trashcan of leaves here, a few rotten bales there, straw, compost, et al. is great. If you have more money than time, buy a few dump truck loads of rich topsoil (~$100/load hereabouts), spread it out, and start gardening. The you can still add amendments over time, but you can start gardening right now.

One of my gardens is on red clay... after battling it for several years, realized it was easier to just move a hundred yards over, to where there was about 20" of topsoil, and Then the red clay.

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

Yes, runoff can be another problem of clay soil. It's slow to soak up water and slow to drain. Hence, the benefit of adding amendments.

If your large plants-the squash and tomatos and such- were planted at the bottom of a small hollow then the water could take as much time as it needed to soak in. Just fill the hollow with the hose and go to the next plant.

I do it by taking one big scoop of the shovel at each spot I want a plant, and then using a trowel to plant at the bottom of the hollow.

Start raising rabbits. You can plant directly into their manure without composting it. I would build raised beds out of recovered pallets and start filling those suckers up with rabbit manure, chopped leaves--not grass clippings, no need to introduce weeds--and blend it with some kind of vermiculite, perlite, etc. I wouldn't mess with the clay at ALL! (I grew up in Mississippi. Hate that stuff with a passion.)

But really, the rabbits are the cornerstone. There are several ways you could do it. If you have the money for initial investment, wire cages will get you good rabbit poo quickly.

If you don't have that kind of money and want something less labor intensive, get a trio of rabbits and build a wire cage without a bottom that fits over your raised bed and latches down somehow. Throw a bale of hay or straw in there, give them some water and pellets and put a piece of plywood over one end for shade, and let them hang out for a while and raise you some meat for the freezer and then move them to the next bed. They will rearrange and burrow in the hay or straw, and if you use straw I've found that they chew on it a lot but don't digest it so it gets finely shredded. Perfect.

After you get them off that bed, dig into the straw, put a scoop of good pro-mix and compost in the planting hole, and you'll be set to go.

It's kind of like straw bale planting on steroids.

In the fall, go around and collect bags of leaves in neighborhoods and dump them onto the beds. Mix it all up and let it compost over the winter and just keep adding rabbit poo and any organic matter that you can to each bed.

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Rachel Haiku Heritage City Farm

Annual cover crops rotated with either turnips or daikons.

That is what I am trying now.

Do it slow. You can speed it up all you want and you'll get a an easy to deplete thin soil covering.

I have a 45 acre gravel pit that I am bring back froma clay/shale top cover.

Right now I am simply using a mix of fescue, orchard, grass and alf-alfa. Open broad cast and then did not touch for two year letting it reseed itself.

Do a soil sample and see what it tells you. Not from a silly Ph test kit but from a professional service via extension. Until you have good data, simply composting and throwing stuff on it is a fools errand.

Then start reading up on cover crops. If you do turnips you can graze animals too if you want. Le the turnips rot, they break down the top surface. Same with Daikon, but a whole LOT deeper. Maybe work in buckwheat or other cereals, but Buckwheat is excellent in REALLY poor soils. Its a good thing to rotate with a legume (nitrogen fixer) since it does sort of the same thing with Calcium and Phosphorus.

I'd do a compost pile just to start building a work population which you then begin to amend with in a couple years.

Lots of ways to go, but you need to do it slowly...or rather DETAILED, which takes years.

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-R

I would think beets would be even better. There are varieties the will go down 2 feet in good soil. Might not get good crops for a while but will bust the soil up and provide organic matter to mix in with the clay.