Clay soil

[Launchbury]

I've scraped the lawn to a depth of about 6 inches off the front garden, the soil has quite a lot of clay in it.

I've read on this site that I will need to dig in lots of soil conditioner (composted organic matter) to open up the pores before laying top soil and then turf.

I don't know where to buy soil conditioner in large quantities, where would I usually get this?

The local quarry only has peat - is this any good?

Many thanks.

 

[Donkmeister]

I've seen gypsum-based soil conditioner for clay, apparently it just breaks it up over time. Could be expensive unless you can just dig in plaster powder (not sure if the additives would make it a bid thing!)

From my own experience with heavy bedfordshire clay, 2" of good home-made compost and 1" of horse manure rotovated into the clay made really good well-draining soil for growing veg in, and I reckon turf would grow excellently on that. However, when I just chucked on a load of manure,, gravel and topsoil onto a different area then rotovated, I ended up with something that seems to grow just fine, but I can tell it doesn't drain as well. In clay it is important to have something to add a bit of structure to the soil.

Some councils have trouble getting rid of the compost from the kerbside collections, it is low-quality in relation to potting compost and peat but it has plenty of fibrous material from hedge trimming etc - might be worth finding out if you can buy it on the cheap: a colleague with an allotment tells me his council just dumps it in his allotments grounds for free as they can't get rid of it any other way.