Clay soil prep

[Ritchie]

I have clay soil and have rough dug a large bed for my taties, now even after another good digging and composting/manuring the bed is comprised of hard clay bricks that would probably resist anything but a rotovator.

Should i:

plant my taties in it anyway to help break up the soil?

get more compost/manure/coarse grit in there? (if so how long, if at all, should i wait until planting said spuds?)

get the rotovator on it? (again is there a waiting period before i should plant?)

cheers in advance

[Primrose]

I'm sure planting potatoes will help break up the soil in the long term but I'd be very tempted to add some more grit or well rotted mature before planting, if possible. Once the potatoes are planted and growing you won't be able to do anything more to improve the soil until they crop, so any improvements you can do beforehand will help.

I have the opposite problem to you - a light rather stoney soil which loses moisture and dries out very quickly, so we all have our gardening crosses to bear!

[peter]

Myth - potatoes help break up clay.

Reality - all the hard work done by the traditional gardener, double digging, earthing up, hoeing, watering, earthing up again, etc, WHEN growing potatoes helps break up clay soil.

[Johnboy]

Hi Peter,
Oh how right you are! Certainly Potatoes do help to break up soil but having done 16 years of my gardening on Hertfordshire Clay I can only agree with your every word. The best thing I ever did was to move back to Herefordshire where growing Potatoes is only a quarter of the work.
Sadly this is no consolation to Ritchie who asked the question.
Mind you when I left Hertfordshire my Clay soil was in a wonderful condition and with the nutrient held within Clay very fertile.
JB.

[Tony Hague]

I don't have a rotivator, but I do have a heavy clay soil. Usual advice is to dig roughly in the autumn to allow the frost to break it up a bit - too late to worry now if you didn't.

I would dig out a 1 spit deep trench, throw in a good layer of whatever compost/manure you have (provided it is composted a bit, and not straight from the horses a***, the potatoes will cope - my father used to use pretty much straight cow manure and straw from cow shed mucking out), and nestle the potatoes on it and backfill.

It looks a little strange, but sometimes I've had success by watering the bed with a hose set to a fine spray, leaving it to soak in, then coming back to prepare it - can sometimes soften the concrete bricks enough to let you break them up with the spade. Needs to be carefully judged to avoid a sticky mess though.

[Ritchie]

Thank you all very much for the info, i have a job of work ahead of me beginning today and continuing for some time

[oldherbaceous]

Afternoon Ritchie, i'm afraid there is no quick answer, just keep adding coarse material to your soil.

But a couple of things that are worth trying are, add homemade compost or the like to the planting holes of the potatoes, add compost to the drills when sowing seed.
This all helps to the immediate growing area, while saving on compost.

The other thing that i found works well is, wait until the clay lumps have baked hard, then either wait until we have had a good shower or soak with hose or watering can, until the lumps are moist all the way through.
Then just as the ground is dry enough to walk on, but before the lumps have dried, knock them about with what ever tool you fancy.
You should find the lumps then crumble quite easily.
This can be repeated several times if you wish, but you must let the soil completely bake between soakings.

Hope you find this of some use.

[Ritchie]

Thanks for that OH, i dug eight barrowloads of manure and compost into the bed today then rotovated it. Whilst the rotovator did reduce the amount of clay bricks it still needs at least another pass or 2 and i gave the bed a good watering prior to hometime. Forecast for dry weather for the next few days so it looks like a plan is coming together.

[Johnboy]

Hi Tony,
I very much agree with your trenching method it was what I did all those years ago. When back filling I used sharp sand which helps to prevent the clay reforming in one big mass. If you do not allow clay to settle it ultimately gives up and with as much compost be it home made or FYM and sharp sand with every movement you are winning the battle.
I suspect that it is not just the Potatoes that break up the clay it is the movement of soil that this entails that is the essential part.
JB.

[Tony Hague]

I've now worked in, at my best guess, about 5 tonnes of FYM and compost into my ~100 square metres of heavy clay allotment over four years, and I am amazed by how much easier it is to work now.

Johnboy, I have planted my potatoes this year by the method I describe above, but I've gone for your plant and ridge up in one step approach as a trial. Better work !

[Johnboy]

Hi Tony,
So I'm on trial now eh! I can only see that it doing good for you.
You will have noticed that it is what the commercial growers and they get enormous yields around here. I am told that last year was in excess of twenty tons to the acre. This is without irrigation but sprayed against blight. We are 1.5 miles from the river and are at around 500 ft.
The seed potatoes for the area are grown above 1000 ft where the pest evidently do not venture and the spuds to not grow enormous and just the right size for the purpose.
I also perfected a method of growing Carrots and Parsnips (in clay) back then and used to get some wonderful results. Clay is so fertile.
Best of luck with the spuds.
JB.

[Ritchie]

Must order some more manure, at the rate its going in to the beds i shall run out soon.

[Nature's Babe]

Hello Ritchie, I garden on heavy clay, if we get drought you will find it goes rock hard if left exposed, and the slugs will attack your spuds for the moisture. I suggest plant your spuds as normal then water them well then cover with a good layer of straw, the spuds will grow up through the straw mulch which will help conserve moisture underneath, the worms will gradually take the mulch down into the soil, and work the soil for you. they did recent studies on this and although there were slugs under the straw mulch there was less damage to the potatoes when mulched in this way. If exposed soil dries out then slugs go down for the moisture in the spuds.
When we first gardened here I found worms in knots in chambers in the rock hard soil, their way of surviving drought, but adding plenty of compost and mulching the beds with straw and dried seedless weeds,and waste plant material it is now fertile and workable. The other advantage of using mulch is less weeds, and any that do get through are easily pulled out because the soil is moist under the mulch. It took me only ten minutes to hand weed two raised mulched beds yesterday with a small hand fork I only just scratched the surface and I was amazed how many worms I disturbed right on the surface. Pump as much organic material
as you can into the soil to build humus and clay is a wonderfully fertile soil

[Ritchie]

Going to have to see what i can use as a mulch as straw is a bit of a rarity here atm, thank you very much.

[Nature's Babe]

If you dry it first you could use lawn clippings, or collect some autumn leaves. I usually sprinkle the lawn clippings on top of the straw and it dries out and adds to the mulch. The spuds grow better in moist soil too.