Welcome to the site! Information here is fairly reliable as most independent growers really understand the value of their expertise and freely share it. The inquiring mind is a good friend!
Take care, Dennis
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Looks like an older thread but since it popped up I’ll share my 2 cents. The best thing I’ve found for loosening up clay soil, and relatively quickly, is sweet potatoes. I always have extra slips after planting out my sweet potato crops and I’ll stick them around my fruit trees. The vines make a nice ground cover during the summer and over the winter they die back and I let the sweet potatoes rot in place. They loosen up the soil beautifully and there’s an explosion of soil life. Maybe not a great idea if you live somewhere warm where they won’t winterkill, but for northern gardeners sweet potatoes are great cover crop for fruit trees. Most sweet potatoes are such prolific slip producers you’ll almost always have extra. Might as well put them to use.
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I have been rotating buckwheat in the spring and winter rye in the fall into my stand of clover. Adding daikon to fall planting every other year. Mowing at sowing ~6/1 and ~8/15. Soil is starting to improve.
With heavy clay it’s difficult to amend the soil, pH and nutrients, quickly. I did soil tests and they vary by location and depth. So I am just adding a fraction of the amount that I think will improve the health and not all sit on the top (e.g. 100#/A calcitic lime twice a year). Also I suggest avoid tilling the soil which will probably make things worse by moving poor nutrient soil to the surface.
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Thank you all.
I learned today from a wonderful farmer on YouTube that the Ultima way is using cow manure. Primarily because it attracts earth worms. So I’m gonna buy bags of black cow and go with that approach.
Thoughts or suggestions are most welcome!
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What growing zone are you? That will help with plant recommendations
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