Mumsnet Talk

Hi all I live in an area where the soil is very dense and clay. Consequently it is very wet a lot of the time - Scotland - it rains a lot and if it is warm it dries out. I have tried to enrich it by adding lots of manure/compost etc over the past few years. However, we have had to have several fence posts replaced as they have rotted. The fence guy mentioned I was contributing to the posts rotting as I have the soil up against the posts and fence. How do I maintain a better quality soil whilst preventing my fence from rotting? I have tried to move some of the soil into raised ridges but I am unsure as to whether this is viable or not with the amount of rain we have.

Any advice would be most appreciated.

We have very dense and clay soil but no issues as we have concrete gravel boards/fence posts. Not so asthetically pleasing but might solve the problem?

Wood will rot because of wet, independant of the type of soil you have. The fence posts have to be treated wood and if you prefer they can be made from a hardwood which will rot much more slowly. In the olden days ships were made from hardwood...

Keeping the soil away from the fence and posts will help but the part under the soil is obviously always in contact with damp or wet soil. You could investigate metal spikes into which you insert the wooden posts, sorry unable to do a search right now but a builders merchant will have them. HTH.

We had very heavy clay at last house, we dug in lots of horticultural grit and cheap peat free compost, about a bag of each for each square metre of soil, then mulched annually with cocoa shell, it made a massive difference.

Great thanks all.