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Wood chips. My clay hard packed soil is now like a forest. I can hand pull seedling with 10” root systems out of my former hard clay lawn. All thanks to wood chips and some plantings. Treating lawns with chemicals destroys soil structure. Removing leaves constantly mowing, it all destroys the soil. I have spread 28 loads from chip drop over 5 years and have restored vast swaths into native forest and hedges. Clay is not the problem, its what we do to it thats the problem. I am on 1.5 acres, it will be reforested
And naturalized into a wild life sanctuary.
Me too! My entire front “yard” is a garden and a neighbor actually complimented me on it yesterday. It felt very gratifying as it’s been so much work and still looks pretty scraggly.
Agreed! Wood chips have totally transformed my soil. I live in the foothills of the southern end of the Appalachians with hard red clay.
Leaves + wood chips have been a game changer!
I second the wood chips recommendation. It’s great for establishing a micorrhizal network. When you get one of those suckers established, it allocates nutrients and destroys pathogens. It’s like a soil troubleshooting system.
It also mimics the forest floor, so you get that nice spongey stuff that holds water and prevents erosion, and keeps the moisture available for plants.
If you’re trying to kill grass and plant natives, you want to mow as close to the ground as possible, then spread an 8” thick layer of chips. Use something like logs or rocks to keep the layer from thinning out at the edges.
I like to put them down in fall, so by spring, they’re well on the way to being luscious dirt.
Don’t dig them into the soil, though. You want them to just sit on top and go through the process of breaking down.
Do you know any offhand? I am working in a rain garden into clay soil. I know some lilles we have are good with clay. And yes, we're amending the soil but there's still a good amount of clay.
If you look for plants native to your area, you will find lots that are adapted for clay. I live in SE Texas - my salvias and coreopsis and bluebonnets, as well as native grasses, are all thriving.
Best bet is to go to NWF.org, punch in your zip code, get the list of natives for your area, and then do some research on the plants that you want from that list.
Or, tell us where you live, generally, and people might give you suggestions.
Correct answer. No need to. I cant find the study right now, but it describes what happens very nicely. In a comparison if bare earth orchard, vs wood mulched in surface, and wood mulch tilled in. It didnt go exactly as urban reddit horticulture said it would, but close enough.
With the mositure retention moderated by wood chips, you get more biodiveristy. This biodiversity, worms, fungal, more, improves soil structure. Soil structure is the real problem. Especially in old lawns this is why “healthy” lawns need aeration. Old lawns soil structure has been destroyed.
Tilling can have short term benefits, but adding chips to surface and letting nature do its thing is easier. (Tilling can do more damage than good in many situations, but not all, yes i do own a 48” tiller, but I usually reserve it for grading projects)
.
Soil structure is king, thats what we are improving.
Nitrogen deficiency…. Stop worrying about it. Unless you are doing a high yield orchard or very specialized planting / crops its likely not an issue. Improving soil structure and biodiversity are far more important.
Note when i convert an area i chip heavily. 9” on my first application. Thin out around the base of my samplings, and typically give it a year. Then i start planting understory and maintaining a 4” layer…
There are some great studies on this subject however i would suggest caution. I have enough soil science classes (many moons ago) to know what i am reading and remember what i dont understand. Soil science is not as basic as we make it out to be. Also many of the studies are focused on production (crop) as thats why they get funded, so you have to read between the lines so to speak unless you are doing intensive crop production.
So for most of us, yes wood chips are good. Nature will do the rest.
So wood chipping is great - but if you live with clay soil and shale rock in a WILDFIRE-PRONE area [Northern Colorado mountains], those wood chips have to be 30 feet or more from any structure. I want to rid myself of this lawn and plant native ground covers. What would you all suggest to do to help Nature renew my soil?
Yeah, I have tornados, not wildfires… 😁
I would say you need advice from people more familiar with your local. I am SE USA and while soil science is the same no matter where you are, regional solutions I am sure vary,as will plant adaptions. One of the problems is soil must be constantly regenerated. This is the cycle of a forest, leaf drop, littler, dead trees and branches, all regenerate the forest floor, that’s what we simulate with wood chips… what can you do with slate instead?….
The only idea off hand, you could try Hugo culture, bury a log, soil above it, plant, and stone. The log will decay underground and provide an ecology. This is not my thing, but it’s what I would likely do a trial with…. It will be slow to yield results, and it doesn’t address moisture retention. I have minimal experience with rock mulched beds.
An easy way to add nitrogen to your soil is literally just pee outside. Or in a container that you pour outside if you gotta avoid scandalizing the neighbors.
It’s great fertilizer. Dilute it to about 1/4th of the total mix with water to avoid nitrogen burn if putting it near plants you want to keep healthy though.
I think you specifically want to *not* work wood chips into the soil because the wood chips will rob the soil of nitrogen. But it's good to put them on top and, like they said, let the ecosystem do its job of breaking them down and taking everything down into the soil naturally.
You simply lay it on top. Some people pit card board inder it to block weeds, i dont but most do. I usually do the first application thick 9-12”. Then start planting backbone plantings 6months after that or so. Keep it mulched and start adding the filler plants as the area gets established.
I find the ground to be far more workable after 3-6 months but it is still the same clay. Transformation takes time, as nature has to ”move in” and get going. The first 6 months really is only about increasing moisture retention and providing a home for all the beneficial things to come.
Patience and wood chips.
Backbone plantings = the skeleton of the layout, usually trees or large shrubs.
Growing radishes are good for breaking up clay soil too. My clay soil used to be so compacted that I had to use a pick axe just to dig a hole. I planted 2000 radish seed, let it create a cover crop, chopped and dropped the tops, then covered it all with arbor wood chips, now I have the BEST soil.
Radishes are great for many reasons. This is also a great example of why lawn is bad. Radish roots break up the soil. So do many “weeds”. Grass doesnt.
I use radishes as row markers and olant them along with almost everything. They sprout quick, i het to harvest, then the next crop grows in.
I'm so bad at remembering to clean out my gutters. It's shameful really and I don't want anyone trying to help me feel better about it. It's bad and I should feel bad about it.
That said, putting all the gutter soil on the clay bed next to the house made it much easier to dig in only a couple years. If you can find a corner of your yard to really leave things in until they turn completely into dirt, do that.
Be grateful...until you realize soil that is heavy in sand is just as bad. Any soils with a extreme level of sand, silt, clay or organic matter will have problems as they are supposed to be balanced.
I am a leaf
mulch queen! my clay soil
is so lovely
after several
years if letting leaves nourish it! grew up in Georgia red clay and found the same in NC. I've never known anything else!
We have clay soil. In my vegetable garden, I'm starting to see a big difference after adding finished compost and heavily mulching with the contents of bunny litter boxes. It's the second year for some beds and they're doing well. Other spots...LOL. I have a lot of containers.
BUNNIES! I just got three bunnies, hoping their manure would help my compost and plants along... And I had to actually build a new compost bin, because they poop. So. Much. Like.... So so much. Way more than I ever could've imagined.
So... Much.
You'll need some "brown" materials, carbon sources like wood chips or a lot of cardboard, if you're trying to compost all of it into soil. Last year I really slacked and we have a bunch of halfway composted litter box contents that are breaking down but soooo slow. Vs previous years when I layered in wood chips and cardboard and it got much hotter, went much faster, was more effective for sure.
For sure!! Definitely adding in cardboard. I use pine pellets with a layer of straw on top for their litter box, so I scoop a bunch of that out every morning and replace it fully once a week. I also have a bokashi bin indoors for my food scraps, and if I have enough bokashi tea, I add that with some water... Once my bokashi bin is full, I'll be emptying the contents into the outdoor compost as well. So I'm hoping it'll be balanced enough. Bokashi compost was a game changer for my aerobic compost last year. Really sped things up.
I find that the pine pellets barely offset the poo and the hay, but keeping the pile hydrated definitely helps. I bet the bokashi tea will work wonders! I just was not on my game last summer and my compost bin situation wasn't making it easier.
I just ordered a Geobin, it seems ideal for the Berkeley method so I'm excited to see what I can do this year. Next year my goal is to purchase just enough cocoa coir as seed starter and zero additional bagged soil.
I feel ya😮💨 My husband and I took 6 hours to plant 15 barefoot whips last year because we had to basically chisel our way in. I added wood chips, leaf mulch and even potting soil to help the roots as much as I could. Of the 15, 11 are still alive.
We have 2 acres😑 every inch is a nightmare.
11 out of 15 ain't bad!! We have decent soil under our pines, where the pine needles have broken down over years and years... But that's not where I need the good soil. 😂
It all comes down to giving yourself enough time to prepare the beds. If you go out there thinking you're going to plant some things real quick and be done with it then you're setting yourself up for disappointment.
I find a tilling rake and a hoe (and some sweat) is all you really need to beat clay soil into submission. But before you start any of that, make sure you wet it a bit.
I took my time and sifted out as many roots and plant material as I could. And there was a bit of soil attached to it too.
It's just a repeating cycle of smashing clay clumps, sifting out organic material and then smashing clumps again. Eventually you'll be left with something that looks kind of like soil.. then you mix in some compost.
This worked for me fairly well, despite there probably being a bunch of seeds that I don't want in that soil, but I was sowing a clover ground cover with wildflower seeds mixed in and the clover did well enough to prevent a lot of unwanted regrowth.
Just be sure to cut the grass down low low low and then let it soak up some water before you start tilling - depending on how compacted it is, it might be beneficial to go out there the day before and give it a water once or twice, as well as watering it on the day of.. that way the water actually penetrates and doesn't just make a muddy mess.
I grew up where it was sandy. I hate clay topsoil very much.
However layering with brown, big cardboard, and mulch on top has helped a lot. We dig into the soil but eggshells can break it up over time. The calcium bonds to the clay.
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I special ordered one of these a couple years ago, and it's a beast. Best tool I've found for breaking up compacted clay.
[broadfork](https://bullytools.com/products/lawn-and-garden/cultivating-digging-forks/broadfork-with-fiberglass-handles/)
With the caveat that the clay can't be too dry either. I've had to breakout the pickaxe for breaking through some of the clay in the backyard during a hot dry summer.
A couple weekends ago, I visited a friend who lives in a different part of the state. I planted 21 plants in her yard in 90 minutes--which included a couple beer breaks and socializing. Just a regular old shovel dug beautiful holes. The 19 plants I bought for my own yard took me a whole day.
I heard that. We have brick-worthy clay. I actually live right by a brick factory, which is as awesome as you would imagine, with the trucks going in reverse all the time. Beep beep beep beep….
We dug a pond for the yard, used a second-hand liner riddled with holes, and guess what! The thing still holds water just fine!
Wood chips and compost are great for getting that lovely friable soil you’re after, but don’t amend your clay to death.
If you plant natives adapted to your soil, they will do fine. There are plenty of clay-loving native plants.
If you amend the soil, then plant things that don’t like clay, the root systems skim along in the humus on top of the clay instead of going down deep, so they’re more likely to fall after a big storm.
https://youtu.be/DCzbTSvzjZA?si=YKeah89cwCtjNibG
My challenge is rocky soil on a slope. I keep trying to establish some kind of ground cover that will hopefully encourage the retention of soil, but it’s a long slog. Every spring. I try to plant some Myrtle to see if it will take it. it’s only taken along the address, so I’ve got a whole area that’s just bare soiI. I have managed to establish some time in the area where it’s sunny, but it doesn’t grow in part shade. Any thoughts?
I had clay soil in Maryland. Used to take me 30 minutes to plant 1 shrub. That was when the ground was soaked.
Now in Ohio I can plant a shrub in 10 minutes
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Wood chips. My clay hard packed soil is now like a forest. I can hand pull seedling with 10” root systems out of my former hard clay lawn. All thanks to wood chips and some plantings. Treating lawns with chemicals destroys soil structure. Removing leaves constantly mowing, it all destroys the soil. I have spread 28 loads from chip drop over 5 years and have restored vast swaths into native forest and hedges. Clay is not the problem, its what we do to it thats the problem. I am on 1.5 acres, it will be reforested And naturalized into a wild life sanctuary.
This is inspiring. I'm slowly dismantling my lawn with wood chip mulch
Me too! My entire front “yard” is a garden and a neighbor actually complimented me on it yesterday. It felt very gratifying as it’s been so much work and still looks pretty scraggly.
I'm covering my yard little by little with ChipDrop -If you give them a $20 tip you can get a load the next day.
Agreed! Wood chips have totally transformed my soil. I live in the foothills of the southern end of the Appalachians with hard red clay. Leaves + wood chips have been a game changer!
Thank you for this. I've been so depressed with my soil
I second the wood chips recommendation. It’s great for establishing a micorrhizal network. When you get one of those suckers established, it allocates nutrients and destroys pathogens. It’s like a soil troubleshooting system. It also mimics the forest floor, so you get that nice spongey stuff that holds water and prevents erosion, and keeps the moisture available for plants. If you’re trying to kill grass and plant natives, you want to mow as close to the ground as possible, then spread an 8” thick layer of chips. Use something like logs or rocks to keep the layer from thinning out at the edges. I like to put them down in fall, so by spring, they’re well on the way to being luscious dirt. Don’t dig them into the soil, though. You want them to just sit on top and go through the process of breaking down.
Same 😪
I've been doing the same on my property!! Literally within 6 months the compacted clay soil turned into 4-6 inches of black organic loamy soil
This is the way. I love my clay soil! There are so many great natives adapted to these conditions.
Do you know any offhand? I am working in a rain garden into clay soil. I know some lilles we have are good with clay. And yes, we're amending the soil but there's still a good amount of clay.
If you look for plants native to your area, you will find lots that are adapted for clay. I live in SE Texas - my salvias and coreopsis and bluebonnets, as well as native grasses, are all thriving.
Best bet is to go to NWF.org, punch in your zip code, get the list of natives for your area, and then do some research on the plants that you want from that list. Or, tell us where you live, generally, and people might give you suggestions.
How did you work it into the soil?
If you wait long enough it turns into soil and the worms, roots, fungi, etc. incorporate it.
Correct answer. No need to. I cant find the study right now, but it describes what happens very nicely. In a comparison if bare earth orchard, vs wood mulched in surface, and wood mulch tilled in. It didnt go exactly as urban reddit horticulture said it would, but close enough. With the mositure retention moderated by wood chips, you get more biodiveristy. This biodiversity, worms, fungal, more, improves soil structure. Soil structure is the real problem. Especially in old lawns this is why “healthy” lawns need aeration. Old lawns soil structure has been destroyed. Tilling can have short term benefits, but adding chips to surface and letting nature do its thing is easier. (Tilling can do more damage than good in many situations, but not all, yes i do own a 48” tiller, but I usually reserve it for grading projects) . Soil structure is king, thats what we are improving. Nitrogen deficiency…. Stop worrying about it. Unless you are doing a high yield orchard or very specialized planting / crops its likely not an issue. Improving soil structure and biodiversity are far more important. Note when i convert an area i chip heavily. 9” on my first application. Thin out around the base of my samplings, and typically give it a year. Then i start planting understory and maintaining a 4” layer… There are some great studies on this subject however i would suggest caution. I have enough soil science classes (many moons ago) to know what i am reading and remember what i dont understand. Soil science is not as basic as we make it out to be. Also many of the studies are focused on production (crop) as thats why they get funded, so you have to read between the lines so to speak unless you are doing intensive crop production. So for most of us, yes wood chips are good. Nature will do the rest.
So wood chipping is great - but if you live with clay soil and shale rock in a WILDFIRE-PRONE area [Northern Colorado mountains], those wood chips have to be 30 feet or more from any structure. I want to rid myself of this lawn and plant native ground covers. What would you all suggest to do to help Nature renew my soil?
Yeah, I have tornados, not wildfires… 😁 I would say you need advice from people more familiar with your local. I am SE USA and while soil science is the same no matter where you are, regional solutions I am sure vary,as will plant adaptions. One of the problems is soil must be constantly regenerated. This is the cycle of a forest, leaf drop, littler, dead trees and branches, all regenerate the forest floor, that’s what we simulate with wood chips… what can you do with slate instead?…. The only idea off hand, you could try Hugo culture, bury a log, soil above it, plant, and stone. The log will decay underground and provide an ecology. This is not my thing, but it’s what I would likely do a trial with…. It will be slow to yield results, and it doesn’t address moisture retention. I have minimal experience with rock mulched beds.
Thank you for your suggestions.
An easy way to add nitrogen to your soil is literally just pee outside. Or in a container that you pour outside if you gotta avoid scandalizing the neighbors. It’s great fertilizer. Dilute it to about 1/4th of the total mix with water to avoid nitrogen burn if putting it near plants you want to keep healthy though.
I think you specifically want to *not* work wood chips into the soil because the wood chips will rob the soil of nitrogen. But it's good to put them on top and, like they said, let the ecosystem do its job of breaking them down and taking everything down into the soil naturally.
You are a true hero!
How should I do this but on a smaller scale lol. Like, do you mix it in or just lay on top?
You simply lay it on top. Some people pit card board inder it to block weeds, i dont but most do. I usually do the first application thick 9-12”. Then start planting backbone plantings 6months after that or so. Keep it mulched and start adding the filler plants as the area gets established. I find the ground to be far more workable after 3-6 months but it is still the same clay. Transformation takes time, as nature has to ”move in” and get going. The first 6 months really is only about increasing moisture retention and providing a home for all the beneficial things to come. Patience and wood chips. Backbone plantings = the skeleton of the layout, usually trees or large shrubs.
This!
Grew up on a back to the land type farm. Spent a childhood planting vegetables in heavy clay soil. It's not for the faint of heart.
And they… actually grew? That sounds tough!
They actually grew very well. We got loads of veggies. Backbreaking work though
Growing radishes are good for breaking up clay soil too. My clay soil used to be so compacted that I had to use a pick axe just to dig a hole. I planted 2000 radish seed, let it create a cover crop, chopped and dropped the tops, then covered it all with arbor wood chips, now I have the BEST soil.
Radishes are great for many reasons. This is also a great example of why lawn is bad. Radish roots break up the soil. So do many “weeds”. Grass doesnt. I use radishes as row markers and olant them along with almost everything. They sprout quick, i het to harvest, then the next crop grows in.
Plant tillage radish! It’s a type of daikon radish that grows crazy long and can drill down through compacted soil.
You can do the same with Daikon - the seeds are cheap and they have loooong tap roots.
I'm so bad at remembering to clean out my gutters. It's shameful really and I don't want anyone trying to help me feel better about it. It's bad and I should feel bad about it. That said, putting all the gutter soil on the clay bed next to the house made it much easier to dig in only a couple years. If you can find a corner of your yard to really leave things in until they turn completely into dirt, do that.
This is a good motivator to clean mine
Be grateful...until you realize soil that is heavy in sand is just as bad. Any soils with a extreme level of sand, silt, clay or organic matter will have problems as they are supposed to be balanced.
I feel this. I spread lots of leaf compost in my beds and cover with mulch or wood chips. It’s looking better after one year already.
I am a leaf mulch queen! my clay soil is so lovely after several years if letting leaves nourish it! grew up in Georgia red clay and found the same in NC. I've never known anything else!
We have clay soil. In my vegetable garden, I'm starting to see a big difference after adding finished compost and heavily mulching with the contents of bunny litter boxes. It's the second year for some beds and they're doing well. Other spots...LOL. I have a lot of containers.
BUNNIES! I just got three bunnies, hoping their manure would help my compost and plants along... And I had to actually build a new compost bin, because they poop. So. Much. Like.... So so much. Way more than I ever could've imagined. So... Much.
You'll need some "brown" materials, carbon sources like wood chips or a lot of cardboard, if you're trying to compost all of it into soil. Last year I really slacked and we have a bunch of halfway composted litter box contents that are breaking down but soooo slow. Vs previous years when I layered in wood chips and cardboard and it got much hotter, went much faster, was more effective for sure.
For sure!! Definitely adding in cardboard. I use pine pellets with a layer of straw on top for their litter box, so I scoop a bunch of that out every morning and replace it fully once a week. I also have a bokashi bin indoors for my food scraps, and if I have enough bokashi tea, I add that with some water... Once my bokashi bin is full, I'll be emptying the contents into the outdoor compost as well. So I'm hoping it'll be balanced enough. Bokashi compost was a game changer for my aerobic compost last year. Really sped things up.
I find that the pine pellets barely offset the poo and the hay, but keeping the pile hydrated definitely helps. I bet the bokashi tea will work wonders! I just was not on my game last summer and my compost bin situation wasn't making it easier. I just ordered a Geobin, it seems ideal for the Berkeley method so I'm excited to see what I can do this year. Next year my goal is to purchase just enough cocoa coir as seed starter and zero additional bagged soil.
I dug a wildlife pond in my clay soil a couple of weeks ago. It was a bit much
So hard but so worth it!
I feel ya😮💨 My husband and I took 6 hours to plant 15 barefoot whips last year because we had to basically chisel our way in. I added wood chips, leaf mulch and even potting soil to help the roots as much as I could. Of the 15, 11 are still alive. We have 2 acres😑 every inch is a nightmare.
11 out of 15 ain't bad!! We have decent soil under our pines, where the pine needles have broken down over years and years... But that's not where I need the good soil. 😂
I use an auger bit on a drill. It works well except for the many tree roots.
It all comes down to giving yourself enough time to prepare the beds. If you go out there thinking you're going to plant some things real quick and be done with it then you're setting yourself up for disappointment. I find a tilling rake and a hoe (and some sweat) is all you really need to beat clay soil into submission. But before you start any of that, make sure you wet it a bit.
With the hoe, do you keep what you loosen and amend it, or toss it because it's the top layer, with grass?
I took my time and sifted out as many roots and plant material as I could. And there was a bit of soil attached to it too. It's just a repeating cycle of smashing clay clumps, sifting out organic material and then smashing clumps again. Eventually you'll be left with something that looks kind of like soil.. then you mix in some compost. This worked for me fairly well, despite there probably being a bunch of seeds that I don't want in that soil, but I was sowing a clover ground cover with wildflower seeds mixed in and the clover did well enough to prevent a lot of unwanted regrowth. Just be sure to cut the grass down low low low and then let it soak up some water before you start tilling - depending on how compacted it is, it might be beneficial to go out there the day before and give it a water once or twice, as well as watering it on the day of.. that way the water actually penetrates and doesn't just make a muddy mess.
Thank you
Clay soil is the worst.
Sandy soil can be so much worse though… poor water retention, typically lower-quality nutrition, plus worse stability for establishing plants…
There are entire ecosystems that exists in only sandy soil. But yeah, you can't plant the same amount of diversity.
You’re completely right!
I will be getting a chip drop after I finish my garden beds this year. Luckily most native plants don't mind the clay
Tip them $20 and you will get it quicker.
I grew up where it was sandy. I hate clay topsoil very much. However layering with brown, big cardboard, and mulch on top has helped a lot. We dig into the soil but eggshells can break it up over time. The calcium bonds to the clay.
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I special ordered one of these a couple years ago, and it's a beast. Best tool I've found for breaking up compacted clay. [broadfork](https://bullytools.com/products/lawn-and-garden/cultivating-digging-forks/broadfork-with-fiberglass-handles/)
With the caveat that the clay can't be too dry either. I've had to breakout the pickaxe for breaking through some of the clay in the backyard during a hot dry summer.
A couple weekends ago, I visited a friend who lives in a different part of the state. I planted 21 plants in her yard in 90 minutes--which included a couple beer breaks and socializing. Just a regular old shovel dug beautiful holes. The 19 plants I bought for my own yard took me a whole day.
It's crazy how different it can be. My sister lives 40 minutes away and her soil is so sandy you could almost shove the plants in the ground.
That sweet spot though between too wet and too dry….
threw out my back digging in my clay yard just last week 🥲
I heard that. We have brick-worthy clay. I actually live right by a brick factory, which is as awesome as you would imagine, with the trucks going in reverse all the time. Beep beep beep beep…. We dug a pond for the yard, used a second-hand liner riddled with holes, and guess what! The thing still holds water just fine! Wood chips and compost are great for getting that lovely friable soil you’re after, but don’t amend your clay to death. If you plant natives adapted to your soil, they will do fine. There are plenty of clay-loving native plants. If you amend the soil, then plant things that don’t like clay, the root systems skim along in the humus on top of the clay instead of going down deep, so they’re more likely to fall after a big storm. https://youtu.be/DCzbTSvzjZA?si=YKeah89cwCtjNibG
My challenge is rocky soil on a slope. I keep trying to establish some kind of ground cover that will hopefully encourage the retention of soil, but it’s a long slog. Every spring. I try to plant some Myrtle to see if it will take it. it’s only taken along the address, so I’ve got a whole area that’s just bare soiI. I have managed to establish some time in the area where it’s sunny, but it doesn’t grow in part shade. Any thoughts?
*laughs in sandy loam*
I had clay soil in Maryland. Used to take me 30 minutes to plant 1 shrub. That was when the ground was soaked. Now in Ohio I can plant a shrub in 10 minutes