Clay breaking my back!

[BooseysMom]

We've got a new-build garden and the soil may as well be builder's rubble. It's solid clay, water-logged for months during the winter and like cement in the summer. I've put down Clay Breaker powder in the hope it will work but feel it will need a tonne of it. This is the first garden we've ever had and all i dream of is a mature garden with well-worked soil and borders. In reality the whole lot needs to come out. The one glimmer of hope is i found worms in the clay. How butch must they be to actually penetrate this stuff?! Just trying to dig it through is back-breaking.
The photos show the raised beds we put in which the root veg got trapped in last year and that was after digging it over and adding sacks and sacks of compost! The clay always wins the war!
Anyone got any experience of this type of thing, i would love to hear from you ..did you win the war on clay or did it break your back?!

OMG following as I am just about to tread your path. New build clay garden which has been waterlogged since moving in. Needing someone to come in and turn it all over and add manure/top soil but now worried about success!

Clay breaker helps mine. I managed to get damaged boxes for £1 each in my closing homebase so that was awesome.

If not masses and masses of organic matter. Westland soil improver is great: composted bark and chicken manure. Nice and bulky.

Dig that in and let the worms help. It'll help, but then you need to repeat mulch with this or well rotted manure annually to 4/5" and wait.....

Compost may not by fibrous enough. Composted bark, strulch or horse manure might just get the air in it better

give up.
pile up compost/mulch high, 2-3 inches if you can, and plant on top.

Don't dig it in. Just put loads of compost on the top. Make your own compost as well as buying it.

Wow, all these replies and i've only just posted this! Thanks everyone

@Jojo19834.. i've got 3 bags of topsoil and it won't be near enough so i'm going to either get composted bark, horse manure and soil improver like @GuyFawkesDay advises or as @woodencoffeetable says ...give up!! I'm tempted to just pile mulch on top and forget digging. I do feel like i'm throwing money at it. I do have a small-ish compost bin and that stuff is like black gold! The worms love it! There's just never enough to tackle the issue.
Good luck with your new garden. We can share our experiences if you like

@SpruceTree.. thank you. Being a lazy @@, i do like the idea of the no digging philosophy..letting the worms do the hard work!

I have just put 600 litres on 12m2 of bed. It needs the same on the rest. That's the quantities needed

We dug out 16inches of clay along the flower bed and discarded it. Put down compost and planted into that. Few years later it’s all back to clay again. We’ve added sand and mixed that in and that did help. It does get easier, but it’s hard going.

Google no dig gardening and let the worms do the work for you.
I’m on clay and the more you mess about with it, the worse it gets tbh.

Basically, stick a load of cardboard over your borders, put all your manure, compost and topsoil in top of it and plant directly into that.
As a bonus, most of your weeds will be suppressed too 😊.
Clay’s not all bad - it has loads of nutrients so you can grow gorgeous roses and pumpkins etc.

I've had success breaking clay soils by planting a cover crop of green manure like alfalfa in the spring (the seeds are very cheap). Letting it grow up over summer then pulling out as much as possible in the autumn, then adding organic matter to work in over the winter. Well-rotted horse manure is probably the cheapest option, but chicken manure pellets also work well.

I use a 4-6inch deep mulch of home-made compost each year. It took about 5 years to get to a beautiful rich loam. I no longer apply compost every year, just when the soil is beginning to look a bit lacking in humus again.

Don't hate your clay. Remember: clay + humus = loam

I once had a very heavy clay allotment plot. My recommendation is to plant lots of spuds and use newspaper, grass clippings, manure, etc to mulch and earth up.

@GuyFawkesDay.. thanks for the info about quantities..v.useful. there are x2 2mx1m beds.

@DobbyTheHouseElk.. gosh it sounds like i could well be in the same boat with this. I think no digging and just piling compost and manure on top is the only way. I think like you say it's going to be hard work and take years to get to a workable state.

@SleightOfMind.. thank you for the advice. I did wonder whether the builders had added even more rubbish to it to make it even worse and that scares me as we want to grow veg. I just wish it was nice workable soil! I'll try what you say thanks

@Stefoscope.. thanks for your msg. I've actually planted mustard seeds in one box as an experiment. It says it's a green manure and was half price at the garden centre. I'm hoping that will help.

@MereDintofPandiculation.. thanks for the msg. That's interesting. Maybe i should try to embrace the clay! 5 years seems a long time and i've wasted 2 by being angry and leaving it!

@TheGoatIsHere.. thanks for the msg and advice. Very useful! I've bought some potatoes this year which say pest resistant as last year's crop had holes in all of them. Also along with my other root veg they got stuck in the ground when we had the hot weather despite frequent watering.

Do you have lots of bricks and builders rubble in the clay? Since digging that out I've found a mixture of digging, lots of home composting, growing potatoes, and getting topsoil from local free website has got my borders to a reasonable state. It takes time, focus on an area at a time.

Google dig free gardening. I heard about it for the first time that.

Today

If you’ve got raised beds then that is easier. Take all the soil out to ground level. Re fill with compost. The council stuff is good as a PP said. It’s cheaper as well. We do this on the veg beds and we don’t have a clay problem, it’s like concrete at the bottom and we don’t grow that deep down.

For me it’s my flower boarders that prove to be tricky. When we dug all the clay out we didn’t find one worm. Approx 25ft long bed, not a single worm. Now we have lots of juicy worms. It is easier.

@TheGoatIsHere.. thanks. Good idea about the grit and hoeing in the dry months. Right now it's easy to dig what with all the rain but still is very cloddy.

@Rollercoaster1920.. thanks. No, not really bricks but loads and loads of stones. We're luckier than some who have discovered wires and batteries in their gardens! Good advice to focus on one area at a time as it easily becomes overwhelming.

@MonsteraCheeseplant..thanks. i looked that up a while back but will need to re-look into it

@DobbyTheHouseElk.. thanks. Actually calling them raised beds might be inaccurate as the sides of 2 of them aren't that high at about 15cm and they're more like borders. Very expensive borders! They were a mistake i think. The other one has higher sides but not much better. I dug right into them and although i added compost it's not enough. Good to hear the worms are now loving your borders!

Forgot to say that I went a bit mental with cardboard. Any non printed cardboard I could get my hands on went into the garden. Amazon packaging, the moving boxes from the loft, loo roll centres. I was obsessed!

@Rollercoaster1920.. ha ha! I've got a few boxes which DS used to make a tank. He crayoned camo colours all over them though! I'll have to save them for now on. I've never heard of that method but can see its merits

5 years seems a long time and i've wasted 2 by being angry and leaving it! It's not an all or nothing! You'll get improvements form year 1. But it's about year 5 when you'll look at the beds and say "that's really good soil".

@MereDintofPandiculation.. Thanks for the vote of confidence i'm aiming for beautiful loam by 2025!! At least in my raised beds anyway!

We had solid Victorian clay but now have lovely soil due to:

Homemade compost
Pet chickens
10 bags of manure from local stables