I am somewhat new to planting in the ground. The soil here is heavy clay, a bit more sandy in some areas (unfortunately not mine). Aeoniums might be able to tolerate it, but I'm sure the Semps won't like it too much. My first thought to amend it would be to add plenty or organic matter, as well as drainage material. Drainage material including course sand, grit, gravel, lava rock. I plan on amending it this spring; the ground in the summer is rock hard (again, fine clay becomes very hard when dry). Which makes the ground hard to work with, and hard to get water in.

I guess, the other alternative would be to make a raised bed.

Thank you for any suggestions and ideas.

My soil is heavy clay, that is why I put in raised beds. Plus the height is easier for me to work.

Lynn gave two good reasons to take the raised beds approach. I would do that too if I had some acreage to plant into.

valleylynn said: My soil is heavy clay, that is why I put in raised beds. Plus the height is easier for me to work.

Lynn, could I see pictures of you raised beds?

Lynn, hope you don't mind that I remembered this photo of yours posted just last week?

valleylynn said:...A photo of Bed 1, taken yesterday.

And at another time and place, one of her smaller raised beds in 2014

Evan,

My yard has a spring at the top of the hill that seeps into my garden. Many plants LOVE this but the semps not so much. I use raised beds that have a light soil mix that has compost and sand. I add chick grit around the plants, although less around the seedlings as they wouldn't enjoy the grit being higher than they are!

Anyway, that combo of beds raised 8" and the light soil mix is the trick. The semops now love my yard.

Kevin

I have clay soil too & in a local vegetable garden Facebook group, someone mentioned going to I think a rice grower facility with a trailer & buying rice hulls & then tilling it in. They said they do a different area every year but continue amending the soil in those areas where they've put the rice hulls. I would love to try it but I don't have a trailer.

For vegetable gardening we did the lasagna method. It worked great for the perennial beds and vegetables. We did eventually go to the raised beds for veggie growing, even better.

I think I will go with Lynns cinder block design. I'm putting the project on hold, while I try to locate the gopher. Gopher mesh would be needed as well. Gophers...

Evan, I use the 1/4" hardware cloth. Perfect for keeping out the pesky ground rodents. My place was full of gophers. Nothing was safe. The ground cloth kept them out of the beds, eventually the Rat Terriers and cat removed all gophers.

Terriers are great aren't they? We have one that's rat terrier/fiest & she goes after anything. She went after an opposum in a hole, even after he bit her. I finally got her away, cleaned up & put antibiotic on her. The opposum was left to eat his rent in bugs. I saw a political meme that was funny & fits my other dogs to a T. Its of a night vision pic from a game camera. It shows a hound dog at a tree barking like he's cornered something. But all the raccoons are on the ground, closer to the camera. That's exactly how my poor Axle is. Dumb as heck. But I love him.

I'm lucky to have little clay here. My problem is drainage especially with the snow runoff. It isn't much of a problem in the vegetable garden since I can't plant much there until it warms up, but the perennial beds take a beating with frost heave. If I ever grow semps in the ground it will have to be in raised beds, with added grit.

Our farm is on a plateau above the river flood plane. Our bottom fields are literally 6+ feet of sandy loam topsoil, no rocks. The plateau where my house sits has more topsoil than expected. I think the river deposited our soil here many many years ago and slowly eroded downward to the elevation the river sits today. We were on the inside curve and soil was deposited here and taken away from the outside of the river curve. We have dug on the side of a hill and expected to hit rock right away, 6 feet later, still soil. Where I work on the opposite side of the river the clay is only a few inches below the topsoil. It's amazing how different the soil can be.
I have added compost to my gardens over the years, truck loads on truck loads. My biggest problem is the huge amount of ground water. Again our well is less than 100 feet deep, 28+ gallons a minute of good water. Our closest neighbor went 400 feet and hit sulfur water. Location location. Our house is 150ish years old, if you're going to dig a foundation by hand, best be sure it's in a good spot. Somehow they built on the only place where there isn't a spring and I thankfully have a dry basement.
Eventually we plan on French draining some of the worst wet spots,we have so many other projects going it my be some time. Until then,my semps will have to be in pots. I hope to restart my rock garden project that was put on hold for last year's chaos.

My natural soil here is like 80-95% clay. SO it's a pain in the butt to dig if it's not super moist or saturated. But, when it's wet or really saturated its suuuuuper easy to dig.
My raised garden beds range from just plain gardening soil to 60% sand to 50% perlite

Aside from one Labrador that dispatched a few ground hogs, my dogs do nothing but chase.

Thankfully I have many predators that keep the pest population at bay. We had a big rabbit problem until a bobcat claimed the yard, now i only have a few very paranoid ones left. My veg garden had a problem ground hog that must have died as I have no new damage. Most of the pests seem to stay near cover so I try and keep important plants out in the open where any pests are ripe for the picking. I have a big redtail hawk hanging around, the squirrels are very nervous.

sedumzz said: My natural soil here is like 80-95% clay. SO it's a pain in the butt to dig if it's not super moist or saturated. But, when it's wet or really saturated its suuuuuper easy to dig.
My raised garden beds range from just plain gardening soil to 60% sand to 50% perlite

Talk about a pain in the butt. My neighbors saw some mad guy beating the ground with an axe in the middle of the hot summer sun.
The soil at my new house is sandy clay loam. Still a pain, but it drains a little bit better. Fortunately, they went a bit overzealous with mulching the area with small landscaping lava rock. Great access to grit.
The first steps will be tearing out the beautiful lawn (being careful not to damage the watering system).
I will have to check if they installed gopher mesh. Hardware cloth seems like a great alternative.
Everyone.

Kathy, give Axle a hug from me. He sounds like a sweet boy.

Sharen, you really have a lot of different soil/weather conditions to contend with. The high water table would be difficult. We had an old homestead farm outside of Poulsbo, WA that had a very high water table. Our cellar would fill with water every winter. We put in a French drain and that was the end of that problem.

Alex, I know what your soil is like, my son lives right by you, and the soil is less than perfect.

I planted an Aeonium as a trial. I have some Sempervivum Arachnoideum offsets that have rooted/or are rooting, those will be the next test subjects. For the Sempervivum, I plan to add a lot more lava rock.

Here's the amended soil, general garden soil + groundsoil + lava rock.

What's the difference between lava rock & chicken grit? I can get grit at the feed store here but have never seen lava rock I guess.

Pumice is a type of lava rock, it absorbs water in all the little crevices. Chicken grit is crushed granite and does not have the little crevices.
For the way I grow I prefer the chicken grit, or 1/4 minus crushed granite.
Pumice is more expensive
Next in cost would be the chicken grit.
1/4 minus is the cheapest by far.








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watch out, mealybug can live in the cracks of lava rock!!