[Rocinante]

Hi all,
Had gardens in the past but never had to deal with Clay, been given a large plot to play with and I put five pigs on it to break it down through the Winter. Pigs moved to another part of the farm and I was full of enthusiasm to get the plot broke up and spuds in. What I wasn't expecting was having me and my Mantis Tiller bouncing everywhere while trying to get a tilth. The farmer in his wisdom thought it a good idea to run over it backwards and forwards with Disc Harrows while i thought it would just compact it more but it did break up the large lumps and level it out a bit. Raining lightly now and I'm not sure how to tackle this heartbreaking piece of ground. Any advice welcome.
Regards from The Gers.

[Casey76]

Morning.

Just a warning.  Your Mantis won't have the weight or oomph to deal with clay.

I'm on clay, though it has been well worked over the past 5 years with lots and lots of compost and other soil improvements mixed in, and I still need to dig by hand before putting the Mantis over it.

You may be better off hiring a heavyweight rotavator for the first run over, and then using the Mantis to get your fine tilth.

Or, if you have a friendly farmer, you could ask him to plough it properly, and then go back over it with the harrow.

[Headgardener22]

Over the years, I've found that the Mantis only works on clay on specific days when the pre-dug lumps are just ready to break up and form a tilth. Any other time it either bounces of the rock hard lumps or digs in to the soggy mass.

With lots of manure, it will help but one thing I've found is to define your beds and work on those. The paths need neither digging nor compost so my allotment is a number of 5ft wide beds with paths between them. Digging, composting and tilling the beds takes time but at least the paths can be left alone.

[Snoop]

Plenty of muck and other organic matter will help. I have clay that bakes hard to terracotta, pretty much. I take the same approach as Headgardener, with paths that I do nothing with and beds (not raised in my case) that I focus all my attention on. If you have access to plenty of muck, if you keep adding it year after year, you will see a significant improvement and things will be better, even in the second year.

[Beekissed]

Can't stress enough that you'll be adding amendments to your clay for years upon years and it will just eat them up like they never were.  I've done cover crops, green manure, mulch, char, age manure, hay, minimal tilling, etc. for the past 20+ years here and the clay is just has hard as a rock after a rain settles it after tilling or turning, even if heavily mulched afterward.  But...there is light at the end of the tunnel...finally...

The Back to Eden method turned on a light and I'm happy to see that it's working....I'll never have to till or turn in amendments again.  The key to clay soil, I'm finding, is not to turn things into it, but to build on top of it and let the worms turn the compost into it.  I've had wood chips on my clay since last May and I'm just in awe, after all these years, to see actual changes in the soil and a new layer of dark, rich top soil starting on top of the clay. 

That's happening in my orchard also, with dark green grass growing around the edges of the wood chips and leaves I've deposited under the trees....before, we could never grow grass, just moss.  Now the orchard is full of clover and grass where before none existed...and that's just from the nutrient runoff around these piles of chips and leaves. 

Around the garden the grass is much more dark and lush, as it's receiving the nutrient flush from the composting chips as well.  The 6 in. layer of wood chips and leaves keeps the soil underneath loose and moist, I have a full megaton of worms now that I've never seen in this soil...huge, fat and many of them...and the thick cover on the soil suppresses weed growth. 

I didn't have to wait until the clay soil was dry enough to till in this year, so I got early crops out early as they are supposed to be done.  I've even got spuds up already, having planted them~not in the clay, but on top of it~in the late fall, then covered them over with chips, leaves, grass clippings, chips, leaves, etc. 

This method was the answer to all my problems with the clay soil, the hard work each year to get that soil loose enough to plant into, then keeping it loose enough for root growth and moisture absorption, etc.  Now it's as easy as pulling back the chips and planting on top of the now crumbly clay, raking a light layer of the fine, black particles of the compost over the seed, waiting for it to emerge and get tall enough to put the chips back around it to keep the moisture in and continue composting around the seedling.  Each year that will get easier and easier as the topsoil deepens and the chip layer thins.  Eventually I'll add more chips to keep my soil covering but that topsoil layer will be only getting thicker and thicker, just lying there on top of the nasty ol' clay. 

[ARPoet]

After years of struggling on heavy clay, laying down tons mulch, compost and manure i have started on the Back to Eden Method this year, so i cant say what the results will be.
But i am quietly optimistic and watching the video and seen some more on youtube who are doing the same..

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=back+to+eden+method

[pigguns]

...not sure what the back to eden method is, but sounds like what I do-
my back garden is solid clay, and I add a layer of cardboard, covered with compost/manure and plant into that.  Don't dig, just add on top every year.... grow things that will work on clay- (spuds, onions, strawbs, rasps, brassicas, peas, beans, lettuce and avoid long root crops.  My first year crops were all pretty good.
Slugs are a pain though.

[ptarmigan]

I have raised beds on heavy clay.  I layer with compost, leaves, cardboard, mushroom compost, manure. Don't dig. And 4 years in have really good soil in the beds...

[ilan]

First step if its a large plot is to mark it out into managable plots  you will get better results from smaller plots well and more densly cultivated . I have found that in the autum rough digging and the aplication of large amounts of saw dust helps also any woodfire ash . the frosts will then break the soil down and in the spring dig in any well rotted compost I use a digging hoe for this , beware of farm yard manure it is often full of weed seeds .

[Headgardener22]

Nows the time to attack your allotment with the Mantis.

I've just come back from tilling 5 of my 20ft x 6ft beds. I've been digging them over slowly since mid/late February leaving the soil mounded up in the middle of the bed with compost piled on top. I took the Tiller today and the soil broke up nicely into a fine tilth and mixed the compost into the top couple of inches nicely.

Perfect for planting my potatoes and strawberries which have been in 9cm pots outside since early March.