In the Garden: How to plant in clay soil

Clay soil is common in Western Oregon and can make it hard to grow plants. Conditioner and lime can add organic matter to the soil so plants can thrive.

Posted: Apr. 19, 2019 2:06 PM

Updated: Apr. 19, 2019 2:06 PM

Posted By: Marisa Woloszyn

Speech to Text for In the Garden: How to plant in clay soil

Below is the closed-captioning text associated with this video. Since this uses automated speech to text spelling and grammar may not be accurate.

"in the garden". i'm at johnson brothers garden market and i'm joined by caleb johnson. and we are heading into the year where people are planting plants and many people actually have clay soil here in the valleys. and what do people need to know planting those plants and they run into that clay soil? clay soil can make it really hard for new tree, shrubs and plants to take off. so one of the best things you can do is add a conditioner or a compost to the soil. and basically, what the conditioner or compost does is it adds nutrients to what is missing from the clay soil because clay soil does not have that many beneficiary nutrients, so a conditioner or compost will make sure that that's available to that plant and i've heard of this before, lime, what does lime actually do? lime comes in lots of different forms. but lime breaks up the clay soil. it actually loosens it so that it gets drainage, it gets other nutrients in it. so just a loosening agent and you also have a soil activ ator and castings? castings. so basically that is just more nutrients and bacteria that you can add to the soil. the more population of those things, the more it can turn that clay soil into organic matter that plants can actually use you don't just want to dig a hole, just dump this in, and put your plant in there, it doesn't quite mean that plant is going to survive. you want to mix some of your native clay soil in so that the plant gets use to growing into some of the good stuff and the bad stuff that is in there thank you caleb. if you have any questions about planting and you have that