This is my first attempt at a garden and I've got a question about aeration.

[Growdo Baggins]

I've never read or heard of anyone doing it. I wouldn't use perlite necessarily but I could use something. I've got heavy clay soil in Georgia and I've added about 6 inches worth of really black soil I found at my neighbors horse farm last November. It's sat covered with leaves all winter. When I stirred the first bed up last weekend and mixed all the black soil with the red soil I found worms in every shovel full. That soil from my neighbors had more worms in it than I'd ever seen. They all got bigger. I've got 3 4x8 plots all with this same set up. I've not mixed the other 2 yet. I planted carrots, lettuces, peas and spinach.

 

[YumYum]

What is the question?

I've bought some really "brown" topsoil that was probably 80% clay. Nice looking stuff but it was worser clay than what we have here and did not drain good at all. I could model clay with it, no kidding. It looks like that pot Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze made together in that movie Ghost.

Earthworms like organic material and a damp soil. If the soil drys out, they just go deeper so just because you don't see earthworms all the time doesn't mean your soil is crappy. I would venture to say they came up because the top layer kept the soil wet so they could eat on the black stuff you put down. Tilling in alot of compost is probably your best bet.

 

[Growdo Baggins]

What is the question?

I've bought some really "brown" topsoil that was probably 80% clay. Nice looking stuff but it was worser clay than what we have here and did not drain good at all. I could model clay with it, no kidding. It looks like that pot Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze made together in that movie Ghost.

Earthworms like organic material and a damp soil. If the soil drys out, they just go deeper so just because you don't see earthworms all the time doesn't mean your soil is crappy. I would venture to say they came up because the top layer kept the soil wet so they could eat on the black stuff you put down. Tilling in alot of compost is probably your best bet.

About adding aeration

 

[YumYum]

Tilling it up before you plant with that black dirt or compost is probably about the best you can do with what you have That will aerate it. Then try not to step all around the plants roots and compact the soil till the next planting.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

If you have a drainage problem you could try hügelkultur, building a mound of wood and putting the soil over the top. It will allow excess water to drain, but the wood becomes sodden and makes a reservoir in dry times. Meadowlark has a thread about it.

 

[DirtMechanic]

Your question is one of mass. Your clay is heavier than the internet says dirt weighs. 2x as much actually. When you mix your compost into your clay, try putting a 12 inch by 12 inch by 6 inch deep tray full of your clay on a bathroom scale. Keep it as original as possible as if it were a half cubic foot plucked from the earth somehow.

Once you know the weight you can make use of a ratio of clay to compost. You really do not want to go too far. Plants mature best in soil. If you get much past 30% compost or so, you are making it expensive and weird for a garden. You will also be shocked at how little your compost weighs relative to that fine clay. I would suggest 2 square feet of your garden to 6 inches be mixed with the weight of one square foot in whatever volume of compost the scale says it equals.

If you want to break soil and mix deeper then adjust your newfound ratio to the depth by weight. I choose to make hill rows, in part because it is a method that helps "aeration", or airspace, or by another name drainage.

This is the soil texture triangle. The percentages are by mass (weight basically). Your compost is serving as sand and silt might impact clay drainage. You can use a jar test to see what is in your soil. Clay will never settle, but silt will as will sand.

 

[DirtMechanic]

Sorry this site oddly truncates edit times and I should have said clay is read left to right. Sand is read to the upper left from the numbers and silt to the lower left from the number. You can see the challenge in turning clay to loam. So we clay diggers have to have other tricks. Our Southeastern clay is rained into acidic pH as liming agents wash away, but yours may be alkaline though I doubt it. You need to know your pH. I can add charcoal and wood ash and lime etc but other alkaline clays in drier areas would be ruined by the practice. Another place has clay like ours, in the Amazon, so google how the Terra Preta soils were made and enjoy the journey into biochar for low organic content soils like Southern clays.