[Brassica Blaz]

hi learned friends,can anyone tell me if clay has any nutrient benefits that help plants to grow?because my neighbour chucks his clods of clay away when he's digging

[fatcat1955]

It's nutrional to pot's, sorry could not resist.

[JayG]

I don't what you or your neighbour's soil is like; if it is very sandy with lumps of clay in it (unlikely!) he would be better trying to incorporate it into the sand. If your soil is very clayey he soon won't have any garden left!

Clay soils are potentially more fertile than sandy soils because the clay itself contains useful minerals and its impervious nature means that nutrients are much less likely to be leached away.

Too much clay though and you have got waterlogging and poor aeration which are problems in themselves; what we all would like (and mostly haven't got!) is an approximately equal mixture of sand, silt, clay and organic matter, and the closer we can get to that ideal by improving our soils the better the results will be!

[mumofstig]

hi learned friends,can anyone tell me if clay has any nutrient benefits that help plants to grow?because my neighbour chucks his clods of clay away when he's digging

It sounds as if he is just too impatient to wait for the weather to beak the lumps up, or too lazy to break them up a bit himself. If we all did this none of us would have any soil 

[8doubles]

I think it depends on the type of clay. A lot of local farms had marl pits a clay/limestone mix which was dug and spread on the fields as fertiliser.

[savbo]

We've got lovely topsoil on our plot but occasionally we hit solid yellow clay and I generally just throw it to the edge of the plot to turn into soil at its leisure

[solway cropper]

You could just leave the clay to break down, as savbo says, or incorporate it into your compost heap. It has lots of nutrients which it can hold on to and release slowly but isn't much use on its own as it forms an impervious layer.

[zazen999]

Clay is the BEST soil to hold nutrients. Sand and organic need to be added for drainage and air content, but don't throw it away!!!