‘Moist but well-drained’ – a garden writer’s stock phrase – is the gold standard of soil
The best way to improve a wet, heavy clay soil’s structure and its ability to drain freely is with the regular addition of plenty of horticultural gritI am bored of rain. Fed up with cloudy days. Sick of the grey drip-drip-drip of this cool, showery, sun-starved, stormy summer, and the monotony of a weather forecast that only predicts more of the same.
A large part of the reason for their contentment is that these plants thrive in the kinds of growing conditions often described in gardening books, as well as gardening columns such as this one, as “moist but free-draining”. The latter is a description that’s bewildering to new gardeners, a frustrating, bamboozling contradiction in horticultural terms that needs explanation.
In many Irish gardens the soil is too heavy and abundant in tiny clay particles to be naturally free-draining. Photograph: iStock Of course, not every Irish garden or allotment naturally provides these kinds of growing conditions. In many, for example, the existing soil is too heavy and abundant in tiny clay particles to be naturally free-draining. In this case the ground will be nutrient-rich yet very slow to dry out in spring, but then inclined to bake hard and to crack in a warm, dry summer.
The solution? The best way to improve a wet, heavy clay soil’s structure and its ability to drain freely is with the regular addition of plenty of horticultural grit , and lots and lots of bulky organic matter in the shape of home-made garden compost and/or well-rotted manure added as mulches in spring and autumn. A no-dig approach, as popularised by the British gardener Charles Dowding, will also help.
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