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    Clay Soil Gardening
    Clay Soil Gardening
    Clay Soil Gardening
    Ebook35 pages20 minutes

    Clay Soil Gardening

    By Michael Carr

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    For many gardeners, trying to establish a garden on clay soil is a difficult and costly exercise. Many plants which do well in other conditions die or fail to thrive when confronted with heavy clay. This informative guide to gardening on clay soils will help save you time and money. It provides specific information on planting, watering and mulching plants in clay conditions and lists both ornamental and edible plants which can grow in clay, with tips on how to grow them successfully.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMichael Carr
    Release dateJan 12, 2012
    ISBN9781465920317
    Clay Soil Gardening
    Author

    Michael Carr

    I'm a freelance researcher and part-time writer from New Zealand. My writing interests include psychology, mental performance issues and gardening.My writing aim is to produce concise, down-to-earth publications about under-explored subjects, and I believe that concise e-books and articles are a great medium for this.

    Read more from Michael Carr

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    • 3/5
      Some helpful tips but there’s a mistake regarding soil type for blueberries.

    Book preview

    Clay Soil Gardening - Michael Carr

    Clay Soil Gardening

    By Michael Carr

    Published by Michael Carr at Smashwords

    Copyright 2012 Michael Carr

    ~

    Contents

    Introduction

    Properties of Clay Soils

    Improving Clay Soils

    Plant Husbandry

    Ornamental Plants for Clay Soils

    Growing Edible Plants on Clay Soils

    Going Further

    ~

    Introduction

    Next to inadequate watering, water logging or wet feet is the most common reason why garden plants in temperate regions die or fail to thrive, and water logging occurs more frequently on heavy clay soils. Such soils can present a big (and costly) challenge to the uninitiated. This doesn’t mean gardeners confronted with heavy clay can’t create great gardens, but it does mean they need no-nonsense advice on how to deal with the unique challenges of gardening on clay soils and information on which plants are suitable for clay gardens.

    Properties of Clay Soils

    Unmodified heavy clay soils can be grey, yellow-brown or red in colour. They are slow to drain following heavy rain, with grey clays tending to have the worst drainage problems (grey coloration indicates a lack of oxygen in the soil). Clay soils also have a habit of swinging from one extreme to the other – wet, sticky and heavy in winter, to rock hard and impossible to dig in summer. Since unmodified clay soils have poor drainage, they are also slow to warm up in spring, resulting in slower plant growth and poor germination of seeds. The plus side of clay soils is they retain moisture in summer, and compared with free-draining sandy soils, have high nutrient levels. This is because better-drained sandy soils tend to leach a lot of water-soluble nutrients over time. To assess the drainage of

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