Gardening with Gary

Gardening Advice from an Expert

Clay Soil

Q. We have clay soil in different parts of back yard and when we have rain we sometimes have standing water..is there anything that I can plant (for instance... flowers, bushes, shrubs..etc.) in that type of soil and condition? Or, should we add something to the soil before planting? We are in zone 5, Delta, Ohio

PS: Our bleeding hearts that I wrote to you about earlier..that I thought were dead...seem to be coming up and doing beautifully and they made it after all!

A. Hooray for the bleeding hearts. If one has not grown them, buy a pot and place in a cool, moist area of your garden, like a forest, and sit back and enjoy those stems of little hearts, year after year!

As for your clay soil, I am right back home where I started gardening in 1962 in a yard of solid clay and construction debris! I do not recommend any plants for this location, as such. You need to improve the garden bed first. If I had you plant something, it may do fine for a year or two, but in even the short-term, they would falter undoubtedly and die!

If we are talking a fairly large area, rent a roto-tiller and turn the soil over well as deep as you can go. Add in bales of peat moss, sand or dried compost. Keep mixing and tilling. The more you work in the new material, the better the garden will be. Then, you will have a bed with great drainage and will be able to grow many plants there besides cranberries, as in a bog!