Amending the Soil

Now that I've discovered the real soil lurking beneath all of that plastic, I've been turning over in my mind what to do with it. The clay is so tough that it can be baked into rock. To test, I took balls of the stuff out of the ground and left it out on the driveway to bake for a few hot days. Voila! Hard as rock. That's pretty impressive, however it's not a great characteristic for a garden. Thick clay doesn't drain well and most plants need soil with good drainage to protect the roots from mold and rot.

To alleviate this situation, I'm going to need to amend the soil. The clay is under only about 3 inches of useable soil so most plants will sink their roots down into it. There are two options before me:

1) Amend only the holes I dig for planting (hoping that over time, most of the garden area will become more plant-friendly)
OR
2) Dig up the whole thing, till it, add ingredients, and then plant.

I go for option one. I may till parts of it, but the idea of tilling almost 1000 square feet of clay is enough to make my joints ache in anticipation.

***Science Nerd Alert***
To make the clay more friendly, I'm going to need something gritty to till into it, like sand. This will make the clay looser and will help water to drain off from around plant roots rather than sit on top of the clay. In addition, I'm adding fresh compost and organic garden soil. The compost is something you can make at home and I'll write another post about that. However, only half of my compost pile is ready so I bought a bucket-full at Whole Foods.

I haven't, however, checked the pH of my soil. Most real gardeners do that but I just am too busy/lazy to do so. If the soil is acidic then I will need to add some alkaloid to it; if it is too alkaloid, I'd add an acid. For growing vegetables it is good to have a soil pH between 6.5 and 7, with 7 being neutral or the pH of water.

(There is, obviously, a lot of science behind WHY things are done in the garden. If you just want to DO it and get done, skip the science parts for now. I just like to know WHY.)

So far, the seedlings I've planted out look happy in the mix.

See photos for rudbeckia (Black Eyed Susan), Echinacea (Purple Coneflower) and stachys lanata (Lamb's Ears).

I know it's irritating and somewhat snotty that I've used the Latin plant names, but to be honest when you live in different places and are looking for plants that you like, you simply can't use the local, familiar name. Rudbeckia is still rudbeckia in Italy, Portugal or Oman. But calling it Black Eyed Susan will simply cause confused looks on the faces of nursery staff. That is the colloquial name given the plant by those who discovered and cultivated it in North America. Those names can even vary by region! So I continue to be a Latin snob for the sake of clarity.