I am about to tackle my Greek, east facing, (non) garden. At the moment I have a lot of land that is mostly clay soil. I have been told I need to work the soil, to make it suitable for some bulbs which is what I want to put in to start off. I have cleared a trench along the top of a stone wall and intend to sprinkle some stone debri left from the builders into the trench, then chuck in some soil, some compost that has been laying around and put in some bulbs at a shallow depth. This really is my first time at getting my hands dirty, but it is a new home and I am sick of looking at empty land. Am I heading in the right direction? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sue

Sue.

Rock can interfere with the movement of water.

What is the terrain like at your place? Coastal? Mountains? Valley?

I'm an hour from the coast in Oregon.

Never been to Greece yet. My dad was born in Athens. (Never learned Greek either since my mother was English speaking Canadian)

Sue

But putting rock into soil can make drainage worse.

Let me use a magnified example to explain.

Suppose you have a 50 foot x 50 foot area (or 50 m x 50 m). And let's say its clay type soil - slow draining.

It may be slow draining, but at least it drains.

Now suppose you lower a boulder the size of an automobile on top of this area, in the center, and let it rest on the surface. Water can't go through that big rock.

Any rain that lands on that rock will not go through and drain through the soil below it. The water on the rock will run to the side and increase the moisture that has to drain in areas that already have water that needs to drain.

This is to explaing that the rock merely takes up room - space.

So if we work rocks INTO our soil, the rock just takes up space.

We may be able to accomplish something if the rock were 80% of the soil mix. Sometimes that means there is not enough soil to fill the pores in the rock and the rock can't compact since the edges are touching.

Often it is better to collect the water and divert it.

Sand is little rock, too.

We have plenty of heavy clay, which I find to be the premium soil when organic matter is added. And as you said, the gypsum works, although lime is my usual additive.

It worked at golf courses too, where I worked in the 1980s, when soil became compacted. We used the lime as a form of chemical aeration.

It is probably safer to not dig trenches for gardening as such, if you have solid clay at about 30cm down. In winter, or whenever your rains come, the watertable will rise and be very slow to drain away. It may even sit in puddles for longer than twenty minutes.

If you can fork in compost to the top 15cm and plant into there, then keep adding compost or mulch to the surface then both the ease of working and the depth of soil will improve.

Unless the soil you are on has been relentlessly cropped, or is subsoil left after erosion then clay can be a useful and fertile soil to garden on. It just takes a bit of 'getting to know'.

If your garden gets a lot of sun and bakes out over summer, you may need to plant your bulbs a bit deeper. Check that they aren't flabby. If they are, they may have been too hot and will be better planted deeper.

If you're wanting 'hot' colours in the garden, along with the geraniums, there's Arctotis and Gazania which cover plenty of ground and have long flowering times. Daisy form.

And for height you might like to try sweet peas, or Lathyrus nervosa, on 'tepees' which can, of course, be painted to enhance the garden style.

I once had a garden with extremely clayey soil, and it took us years of adding sand and compost, to get it into reallly good garden soil.

You say it is hilly terrain over there. Does it get very windy? If so, you will need to plant your bulbs much lower than the usual 'twice the depth of the bulb'.

I would suggest that you start your composting heaps at once, as there is nothing better than adding your own home- made compost to clayey soil to improve it. And in that heat your compost should be ready in a few months! Lucky you!

Have fun and do tell us how it goes.