339 How To Water Clay Soil (and more clay gardening tips!)

Show Transcript

339 TRANSCRIPT How to Irrigate Clay Soil (and more!)

Farmer Fred

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. It's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred.

Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.

Farmer Fred

If you’re a gardener, you need to know exactly how to water clay soil. As America’s Favorite Retired College Horticultural Professor, Debbie Flower, told us recently, that is a story all unto itself. Today, we hear that story from Debbie, along with a lot of clay soil-related scenic bypasses, including how to dig a hole for a plant (it’s not as simple as you might think). Also, why you don’t want to rototill clay garden soil, and the importance of garden pathways, especially in a garden filled with clay.

It’s all in Episode 339 of today’s Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast: How to Water Clay Soil, and more tips for gardening in clay.

We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory,  it’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!

HOW TO WATER CLAY SOIL, Pt. 1

Farmer Fred

You may recall a few weeks ago, we were talking about cucumbers with America's favorite retired college horticultural professor, Debbie Flower. And we were talking how to plant cucumbers, how to care for them. And she mentioned that irrigation and drainage are very important to the happiness of cucumbers. But she had a warning for us. And this is what she said back in that episode about cucumbers and clay soil:

Debbie Flower

“So I totally support starting them from seed. Know where you're going to grow them. They need full sun. So you have to have a place to have full sun and well -drained soil. No puddling there. And some organic matter in the soil. You can grow them in clay. You can grow a lot of things in clay, but you better have t or at least mulched with organic material. And over time, that organic material will become incorporated into the clay and you'll have improved soil. Watering clay soil correctly is a whole other story. So just be aware that you're going to have to pay attention to that.“

Farmer Fred

Debbie Flower, tell us that story, would you please?

Debbie Flower

You ready?  Snug as a bug in your pajamas and ready for your nighttime story?

Farmer Fred

Once upon a time, I had clay soil.

Debbie Flower

Yeah, yeah, and many people do. And it's actually very wonderful gardening soil if it's treated correctly. So as I said, mulch it regularly, even if there's nothing planted there. Soil types, sand, silt and clay are defined strictly by the size of the particle. The biggest particle is sand and it has quite a large range of sizes it can be, but the biggest particles in soil are sand. Then silt is the intermediate size and clay is the tiniest particles. And if you ever worked in a soil lab or visited a soil lab, they have a series of sieves that have different size holes in the bottom of them. And that's how they wash soil through, goes through the big holes first and the holes get smaller and smaller and smaller till you're at the bottom of this stack of probably eight or nine different sized holes in the bottom of the sieves till you get to the bottom. And what's in the bottom will be clay because it goes through the smallest of holes.

When you have clay and it's in a very small particle, you can pack a whole lot of those particles together in a small space. Let's say you were to fill up a small juice glass with clay. You would have, let's say 10 ,000 particles. If you were to fill that same juice glass with sand, you might have 100 particles. The difference in size is quite amazing.

Farmer Fred

We'll have a link in today's show notes that shows a good example of a beaker full of what looks like soil, except one layer in the beaker is sand, the other is silt, and one is clay. But they're all in the same beaker because they migrate to different levels inside that container.

Debbie Flower

A traditional way of checking your texture of soil, and we're talking about texture, whether it is sandy, silty, or clay -y, is to get a nice jar, like a mayonnaise jar, a quart jar, and dig down, take everything off the surface of the soil, take the mulch away. You want to be down probably six inches where the roots would grow and take enough, a cup or two. So you want to fill that, put it in that quart jar and not have it go above the halfway point. Add a drop, just a drop, of liquid dish soap and fill it up to the shoulders, just below the mouth of the jar with water. And then you shake for 10 minutes.

Farmer Fred

So put a lid on first.

Debbie Flower

Good idea, yes, you want it to have a tight fitting lid. We used to do this in class and we would time it 10 minutes. Everybody get up and walk around. You wanna shake it upside down, you wanna shake it upright, play some music, dance to it, but shake this jar. And then turn it over and set it down onto a counter and watch it. The first thing that's gonna fall out is the sand because it's the biggest particle and it's the heaviest particle and it falls to the bottom. And you'll get a layer and then you'll be able to see the differences in the particles where one clay particle ends and another clay particle begins. Then you'll get some silt and on the very top is the clay and the clay can take days to settle depending on how small it is. If you have very cloudy water, then there's a lot of clay left to settle and you may have to walk away from it and come back later. And then you measure the layers and come up with percentages. Let's say you have 15 % sand and 25 % silt. What's that leave you with?

Farmer Fred

60%. That’s a lot of clay.

Debbie Flower

A lot of clay. Anything over about 30 % of clay, you have clay soil. So clay is very small particles and as such it has, each particle has a large surface area. Like think of a penny compared to a half dollar. For the size, there's a lot of surface area on that penny compared to that on the half dollar. Water travels in soil by running along the edge of the soil particles. It sticks to the edge of the soil particles. And so if you have lots of surface area, it holds lots of water. So moral of that story is clay holds lots of water. The water also travels slowly through clay because it takes quite a while to coat each particle with water, which is how water moves in soil. It coats each particle as it moves up, down, and to the sides.

So when you're watering a garden that is growing in clay, you're putting water on faster than it can be absorbed into the clay and you will get puddling. So you need to irrigate in what's called surge irrigation. A good amount of water on average in a garden is one inch per week. Of course, that's going to vary, but if you have no idea how much to put on, one inch per week is great. Get out some cans, lay them across the lawn or garden, turn on the water and see how much you can get on that garden before you create a puddle and keep track of the time. Let's say you turn on the sprinkler and after 10 minutes you get a puddle, turn them off, turn the sprinkler off, turn it off for 10 minutes. That should allow the puddle to enter the soil. Maybe you got a quarter of an inch of water on there. Then you're gonna turn it back on for another 10 minutes, probably. Again, watch for the puddle, keep track of the time. Let's say it worked that way.

You had another 10 minutes, you got another quarter inch in the can, and then you have to turn the water off until it soaks into the soil. Let's say it took 15 minutes to soak in. So then you turn it on again for 10 more minutes, get another puddle, turn it off, let it soak in. So you're surging the water, you're putting it on and stopping, putting it on and stopping, putting it on and stopping. That's how you have to water clay soil. Then you don't need to water again for a long, long time. Good to have a way to check that.

We've talked about moisture meters. We've talked about taking a long stick and pushing it down through the soil. It will go easily through the soil that is wet and when it comes to a dry place, it will slow down. Using a long stick that will show you the water. So like a screwdriver.

Farmer Fred

There you go. I was waiting for the word screwdriver. I had my vodka and orange juice ready to go.

Debbie Flower

And when you pull it out, you'll be able to see the mark where it's still wet. You'll be able to see how deep the wetness is. And of course you can dig a hole and look down there. And the plants will give you clues. Are they wilting or are they standing up? So with clay soil, it takes a longer time to put the water on because the particle sizes are small, but it holds a lot of water in the root zone and you don't have to irrigate as frequently.

Farmer Fred

We should point out that when you're doing the can test that all the cans should be the same size, like all tuna fish cans or all cat food cans all the same size. You can buy professional measuring cups to do this that you stick in the soil and they're graduated on the side as far as depths go, so you can more easily determine.

Debbie Flower

Sort of like a rain gauge but one that you would put in the soil.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, right. It looks kind of funny having all these funnels stuck in your soil. But yeah,  it works like a charm.

Debbie Flower

It's also good for helping to figure out water on a lawn, if you're using a sprinkler system, if you're getting equal coverage throughout your entire lawn, for example. Yes, sprinklers are interesting that way. Whether you're using a permanent system that has hose supply lines and emitters that you leave in the ground year round, or you're using one on the end of the hose, they drop very little water right at the place that the water comes out. The water sprays a distance.

And so if you want water where you have set that sprinkler, where the emitter is in the drip line or the micro spray line or where the device is at the end of the hose that lets the water out, you have to have another sprinkler someplace else that throws water in that direction.

Farmer Fred

They should overlap by what, 50%?

Debbie Flower

I like head -to -head coverage. okay. Meaning that the water from one sprinkler will land at where the other emitter is.

Farmer Fred

You didn't mention the most fun parts about having clay soil.

Debbie Flower

You want to test it in your hand?

Farmer Fred

Well, no, I was thinking in the wintertime, it's so muddy you get your car tires stuck in it and you need to get towed out. Or in the summertime, if you go to dig, you can't even get through it with a pickaxe. And the only way you can dig a hole in the summertime in clay soil is to literally pickaxe out an inch or so as much as you can do, fill it full of water, come back tomorrow and then take another inch out.

Debbie Flower

Yes, yes. It's tedious stuff. And so to improve that, that's where the organic matter comes in. Organic matter solves all soil problems. You lay it on the surface over and over and over again so that it breaks down by the natural processes in the environment and the life in your soil. And over time, it becomes mixed with this clay. Do not mix sand into clay soil. We live in the West here where there are those missions and those missions are made from, in many cases, adobe. And guess what adobe's made from?

Farmer Fred

Clay and sand?

Debbie Flower

Clay and sand, yes. And then it dries in the sun and you get adobe, which is like concrete. To improve clay soil, add organic matter on the surface and let nature do its thing. I had a professor at Rutgers, which is where I got my bachelor's degree in plant science with a horticulture specialization. I've told this story before, so if you've heard it, you can go do something else for a minute.

At the time, he attended Rutgers also, and at the time he was a student, a place where students lived were the old World War II barracks, and they were not landscaped. It was just a bunch of buildings in the middle of a field. And his job to make money so he could go to college was in the animal lab, and he had to clean out the rat cages. And he collected what was in the bottom of those rat cages. So that's some sort of organic bedding and pee and poop from the animal.

He brought it home and put it on the soil outside of his, where he was living, one of these barracks. And by the time he graduated, it was clay when he started, he couldn't dig in it. As Fred said, need to use a pick, and most college students don't have a pick with them in their dorm room. But at the end, by the time he got his degree, four years later, he could plunge his hand into that soil, no problem.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, I'd be suspicious of any college student who brought a pickaxe with them into the dorm room. I'd be worried.

Debbie Flower

Yeah, I'd be worried too.

Farmer Fred

But yeah, it could be mulch too. In the fall, when the leaves fall, you could spread those around too. That's the perfect mulch. You can use that. You can use arborist chips. You can chip your own, whatever it is you're pruning that day. You can make your own compost and put that on. Just put mulch on the soil.

Debbie Flower

You could add Grass clippings, although you have to do that in very thin layers because grass clippings, when they overlap, will mat, they'll stick together, they get sort of slimy and then they stick together and then water will not penetrate through there. Any kind of organic matter on the soil, on the surface as mulch, okay? Mulch means on the surface. So any kind of organic matter on the surface. and just leave it. over the winter is a wonderful time to add mulch.

Farmer Fred

I would be leery of using Bermuda grass for that purpose.

Debbie Flower

Well, that's true. And you don't want to use weeds that have seeds in them or reproduce from the stems like Bermuda grass does. Yeah, it can cause trouble. Sure can.

Farmer Fred

And mulch, as you pointed out on this program many times, the fact that if you have three or four inches of mulch on top of the soil, it's going to break the force of the rain coming down. Or if you have sprinklers, the force of that water coming down.  So that it's more slowly going to percolate into the soil. And if you have clay soil, it's gonna get further into the soil before you get runoff.

Debbie Flower

Right, and water droplets flying through the air are very powerful and can cause soil compaction. So it can cause those clay particles, which are already small and close together, to get even smaller or closer together for sure and get rid of the spaces between them. And that makes it even harder to garden in that area, which is why at the beginning I said put mulch on all clay soil all the time, even if you're not gardening there, because you want to prevent that from happening so you have options in your future.

Farmer Fred

And avoid walking on wet soil, especially if it's clay.

Debbie Flower

Yeah, unless you've created paths, but then put mulch on top to help distribute your weight.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, that goes into garden design that if you're just laying out a garden for the first time and you know have clay soil, put in four foot wide pathways for you and your wheelbarrow to be able to reach all points in the garden. So that means your garden beds would probably be no more than four feet wide along with a four foot walkway on either side.

Debbie Flower

Or in a wilder garden, which is how I garden, I call it the gardener's path. People who are not gardeners don't see the path. But those of us who work it every day take that path. It's the same path all the time. When I walk through it, if something's growing in the path, I pull it or I prune it so that I have, and they're only maybe a foot wide. Yeah.

Farmer Fred

Sort of like mountain bike paths.

Debbie Flower

Yes, exactly. Yeah.

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HOW TO WATER CLAY SOIL (AND MORE!) Pt. 2

Farmer Fred

We're talking clay soil today. How to water it, how to plant in it, how to care for it. We're with Debbie Flower, America's favorite retired college horticultural professor. Let's keep going.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, mulch does a world of good, and especially with clay soil. And I'm sure that you would dissuade people, too, from if they're planting in clay soil of using a good expensive potting mix and using that in the hole instead.

Debbie Flower

All that does is containerize your plant in the ground. Water takes the path of least resistance. So you buy a plant, you dig a hole. Let's say you do amend the soil. So amend means mix in. Mulch means lay on top. Amend means mix in. Landscapers will very often, if you hire someone, they will very often amend the soil. They put back into the hole, I suspect it's because they can charge you for what they're mixing in. They can make money off of you. Or they think it's right, or they think that's what you want. So you gotta be in control of the situation if you have someone else who's planting the plant. But if you do amend the soil, meaning you mix a whole bunch of that bagged whatever into the field soil and put it back in the hole, then the plant is living in just a bigger pot in the ground.

The water will take the path of least resistance. So when you water the plant with the amended soil, the water will stay in that hole for a long time. It takes, remember, it takes a long time for water to soak into clay. So the water will go through to the bottom of the water area you've amended and sit there and take a long time to leave that area. That leads to saturation, saturation leads to lack of oxygen and you start getting rotting and chemicals that are produced in rotting organic matter and soil are actually bad for plants. And so you can kill your plant that way. It's much better to just put the plant, yes it came in some kind of container media, which is pretty much organic matter, dig a hole slightly less deep than the root ball and two to three times as wide.

Set the plant, cut the roots, take it out of the pot, gently pour it out of the pot (upside down, holding the soil ball near the main stem with your fingers splayed). Slice the roots just on the surface, around the outside and across the bottom. Set it down so the roots are on the bottom of the hole. If there are roots hanging out, after you've cut them, cut them off or spread them out. Don't leave them curled under the plant. Then put the field soil back in around the plant. The plant should stick out, half inch, inch, two inches depending on how big it was, what size container it was in, and then mulch on top. And the mulch will become organic matter and move into the soil, but you have not changed the texture of the soil around that plant. But you have to tend that plant very carefully now because it is in different soil, all the roots are in a different media than your field soil. So you have to water that plant as needed. In a hot, dry summer like we have in California, that's daily, and it takes six weeks approximately for the roots of the shrub (to get established). This was part of my master's thesis. It takes six weeks approximately six weeks for the roots of a shrub grown in a number one to grow into the field soil. Then you can lay off of the potential daily watering of your new plant. So it's gonna be watering as needed to the plant itself and once a week to the field soil around it.

Farmer Fred

Is there any truth to the oft repeated advice of after you've dug a hole with a shovel, the sides of that hole may actually be, if you will, “glazed over” due to the backside of the shovel, and you should make some indentations or somehow loosen up the sides of that hole to allow the roots to better penetrate the outer layer?

Debbie Flower

Yes, absolutely. That is true, especially in a clay soil because it becomes slick. You've pressed against that clay soil to push those particles together and you've made an artificial wall. So absolutely go at it with a three pronged tiller or just the side of the shovel or the tip of the shovel and just make some indents. Give the roots a place to catch.

Farmer Fred

Well, you mentioned the word tiller, so let's bring up that subject because I can see what some of you people are thinking at home because we are in the 21st century and I do have artificial intelligence. And what you're thinking now is, “well, what if I buy some really nice soil, spread it out evenly on top of the entire garden and rototill it all in? Wouldn't that make everything better?” Well, except the blades of that rototiller would actually be creating that slick layer on the bottom, as deep as those tiller blades can go, and you still have some water penetration issues.

Debbie Flower

Right. When a yard is initially landscaped, very often they do bring in a layer of good soil, quote unquote. It's typically some field soil harvested somewhere else and then mixed with some organic matter and then they lay it on top and mix it in using a power tiller and then lay sod on top and it has some benefit but it's It has its own problems, too.

Farmer Fred

Yeah rototilling Does create those artificial barriers right like I mentioned and if there was a time to use a rototiller might be at that initial formation. If you build a house on what was previously unlived on land before and you wanted to start a garden, maybe doing it once with the amendments, you can get away with it.

Debbie Flower

Right. If you do it over and over and over again, we found this out by looking at field soil that was tilled for, was farmed for generations maybe, maybe just for decades. Either one. It breaks up the soil particles. Soil creates what are called aggregates, where soil particles stick to soil particles and clay is really good at making aggregates. So clay particles stick to clay particles in an irregular arrangement and that creates bigger holes between those particles that are stuck in that what's called an aggregate. The soil can store water and air in that aggregate and it makes really nice gardening soil. Makes it easier for the water to go in and it makes it easier for the air to come in.

It dries out more quickly, but this happens over time and it happens, the glue that makes this happen is the poop of the things that eat the organic matter that you've put on the surface as mulch. So you have to be patient. Gardening is always an exercise in patience. If you till regularly, you're breaking up those aggregates. You're destroying the structure of the soil and those very fine particles that result, wash down to the bottom of wherever you irrigate. If you grow the same crop over and over again, you irrigate to the same depth, maybe a foot, then the bottom of that, where that irrigation goes is gonna be full of tiny clay particles and you will end up with a layer that the water will take forever to get through and you have a perched water table. So you've created a bigger problem and it's down lower and it's gonna be harder to take care of.

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HOW TO WATER CLAY SOIL (AND MORE!) Pt. 3

Farmer Fred

So we started off talking about how to water clay soil. Well, we've taken many scenic bypasses about clay soil and how to treat it right. So let's keep going with America's favorite retired college horticultural professor, Debbie Flower.

Farmer Fred

The other thing you can also do to improve clay soil would be in the off season, would be planting a cover crop.

Debbie Flower

Cover crops are planted for specific reasons. I love  Peaceful Valley Farm Supply for all their information on their website about cover crops. So you want one that goes deep. Alfalfa is an example of something that has a deep root to penetrate through the layers, break it up. Water will follow the root and it will go deeper.

You don't need water to go real deep. You don't need it to go below the root zone of the plant. It doesn't do any good down there, but it will help break up the soil and it will add organic matter. So if you just want to add organic matter, you use some sort of a grass, oat or their annual rye. You want it to be an annual. Anyway, there's a lot of information you can get about cover crops, but cover crops do add organic matter and help break up soil.

Farmer Fred

We'll have that link for Peaceful Valley Farm Supply in today's show notes where you can read all about cover crops. And there's also the growing practice among gardeners of basically leaving the root matter of whatever you grew the previous season and just snipping off the top, letting those roots stay in the soil over the winter where they'll break down and maintain those air pockets. Right. They become organic matter. Right. So  there's a lot of good ways. It seems odd to say, but you can't see it. But air is a very important part of soil.

Debbie Flower

It is. Roots need air. Air is used by probably all the cells in the plant. It's never good to say all in horticulture, but for respiration, for breaking down the food packets that are stored in that part of the plant to release the nutrients so the plant releases the plant food actually, so the plant can do the next thing. So plants make food by mixing the sun with the water and other things in the plant and they make food packets. And you've heard the saying, make hay while the sun shines. That's what they're doing. They bale it basically, make it into a packet and store it somewhere. They store almost everywhere, in stems, leaves, roots, fruit. That's how fruit gets sweet. And then when it's needed, the plant's been pruned and now it has to do a whole lot of growth. So it breaks down a whole lot of food packets and uses that to make the new growth. So roots do a lot of growth, a lot of respiration. They don't do photosynthesis. They're not above the ground. They don't turn green. They don't have the ability to make food. They do have the ability to absorb water and whatever is dissolved in it. And they do store a lot of these food packets that the plant makes above ground or below ground. But in order to break them down and make them available to the plant, they need oxygen for the process of respiration, which does that.

Farmer Fred

There's a farm advisor for the University of California in central California who has been urging farmers to adopt cover cropping and no-till practices on the farms. And he had a lot of volunteer farmers who would dedicate a certain amount of acreage to this practice. Turns out, with no-till and cover cropping, you can grow more crops when it's time to grow more crops, more densely. And one of his best demonstrations of that was to bring out farmers to one of these demonstration plots that has been done with no-till and cover cropping, which is adjacent to a typical farm lot that has been used with synthetic fertilizers and basically everything you normally do in farming, such as tilling. And he would just have the farmers, first of all, walk on the traditional farm soil. It's as hard as a rock. It's like walking on asphalt. You go over to the no-till and cover cropping section and they all described it as, walking on a bed mattress, it was soft. And he said, well, that's because there's air in there. And that explains in part why crop production is so much greater on that portion of this field.

Debbie Flower

Wonderful. I'm so glad somebody's doing that and showing the results.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, in a very practical way. Yes. Well, I mean, for farmers, the practical is, OK, let me see your bank statement, your bank balance.

Debbie Flower

Right. Yeah. Right. For the moment, not looking ahead. Yeah. It's been proven, at least it was a UC study, I believe. So in California, growing vetch, which is a nitrogen fixing crop as a cover crop, it's a vine and it has little purple flowers. Growing that as a cover crop, you get better growth of tomatoes in that area. And you're going to even have to pull out the vetch. You just plant the tomatoes among the vetch.

Farmer Fred

Have you ever tried pulling out vetch?

Debbie Flower

I know it's a pain.

Farmer Fred

Yes, it's a rather viney crop. It is.

Debbie Flower

And it has tendrils, so it ties to each other.

Farmer Fred

Yes. And gets all clogged up in your rototiller.

Debbie Flower

Right. So you don't do that. You just go through and snip off the top. Leave the, like what you were saying, the bottom of the plant and plant your tomatoes in when it's time.

Farmer Fred

One of the radio names I considered using over the years was Harry Vetch.

But I never did. That's okay. I think I settled for Sam Joaquin.

Debbie Flower

What was the original question?

Farmer Fred

Talking about water and clay.

Debbie Flower

That's right.

Farmer Fred

Well, you see, we take the scenic bypasses. Thank you for joining us on our little trip here. Debbie Flower, thanks for your help.

Debbie Flower

You're welcome, Fred.

GARDEN BASICS PODCAST - HELP SPREAD THE WORD!

Farmer Fred

OK, here’s your garden to-do list for the day:

• Spend some quiet time in the yard.

• Walk, converse, smell and touch all your plants. Enjoy the texture, the aromas, the color combinations, the structure.

• Admire the natural amazing artwork of plant leaves, and check both sides of those leaves for eggs or insects.

• If you’re checking for eggs or bugs on your plants, make sure they are the bad guys, not the good guys, before you shoo them away.

• Take a seat out there, and watch and listen to the visitors to your yard, from insects to birds to four footed creatures, some of whom may be of dubious benefit.

• And, if you would please, help spread the word to your gardening friends and family about the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast.

• Leave a thumbs up or a comment on the show at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, that let you comment or share, including our home page, GardenBasics dot net. And if you subscribe, leave a comment, share and a thumbs up, as well, at our newsletter, Beyond the Garden Basics, which is on Substack. You can find a link to all of these in today’s show notes.

Farmer Fred

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred comes out every Tuesday and Friday, and it's brought to you by SmartPots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Garden Basics, it's available wherever podcasts are handed out. For more information about the podcast, visit our website, gardenbasics.net. And that's where you can find out about the free Garden Basics newsletter, Beyond the Basics. And thank you so much for listening.