What is clay soil?

We talked about improving your clay soil, but it may be beneficial to define what makes up clay soil.

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All soil is made up of eroded rock particles. The difference in the size of the rock particles defines the type of soil. Sand particles are the largest, silt are medium sized, and the smallest are clay particles.

 

Clay Soil has a high ratio of small clay particles compared to the number of sand or silt particles. The small size of these particles can result in a very dense soil that inhibits root development and water drainage. If you have hard dirt clods that will not easily crumble in your hands you likely have a significant amount of clay in your soil.

 

These clods were treated with RestoreClay shortly after this picture was taken. Make sure you visit the bottom of this article to see the results.

 

Clay soil when dried-out and ground-down will become a fine powder.

 

When you add water back to the dried clay powder you get a putty (think pottery clay).

 

If you can take the soil from your yard and form it onto a ball, congratulations you have Clay Soil. Sandy and silty soils will not hold the shape.

RestoreClay by SoundSoil is formulated to help soften the bonds in hard clay soil.

 

These are the three clods from the picture above after 24 hours.

 

 

Find out why plants and lawns have a difficult time growing in Clay Soil in our next article.

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