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PostPosted: Sun Aug 31, 2003 3:32 pm 
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Location: Flower Mound
I have lived in my present house for 8 years now. It was a new construction and only organic materials have been used on the yard from the beginning. The problem is that the stuff that they comically refer to as soil in this area is really a bright orange and extremely hard concrete like stuff. In fact, I cannot even dig into it with a pick ax. I have actually taken an electric drill and drilled holes just to see if I cold get down into it. If you take a piece out and break it up and then wet it, it turns to mush, but when it is dry, it is like concrete.

Does anyone know what I am talking about and is there anything I can do to help penetrate this stuff?


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 31, 2003 4:49 pm 
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Very serious penetration problem!!

What happens when it rains? does the rain just roll off? Does anything grow in it? -weeds or anything?

My first intuition is to say to put mulch on it several inches thick. If the first layer, say 1/2 inch thick, is compost then that will be better. Then cover the compost with 3 inches of mulch until next spring. What should happen with the compost and mulch is that the shade from the mulch will allow the moisture that is in the soil (yes there is some) to persist at higher levels in the soil. With the moisture, the microbes will be able to penetrate and set up camp in the top layer of the soil. By next spring you should have a little trouble determining where the original soil ended and the mulch/compost began. In your case, that might be quite a challenge for the compost!

Okay, here's how I would do it. I would sprinkle corn meal at 10 pounds per 1,000 square feet right on the surface of the soil. Then spray the corn meal and surface of the soil with molasses at 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. You can mix it in a gallon (or ten) of water to spray it out. Then cover with 1/2 inch of compost, and finally with 3 inches of mulch. If you can get Hill Country Texas cedar mulch, that seems to work much better than the east Texas cedar mulch. They are different species of plants. Keep the mulch damp as if it were already growing something. Water once a week. Water to the point of runoff, which in your case is about 15 seconds :lol: But keep the mulch damp at least. You want some rotting to go on inside the mulch and you want that rotting to penetrate down to the soil level.

Corn meal is a great source of protein for the microbes in the compost. Molasses is a great source of sugar for the microbes. They need both in order to thrive. When the microbes start to live in the soil, they will loosen the soil and penetrate it with their own tissues. Once they get started, they must be nourished. The best way to do that is to grow grass, plants, and trees, and then fertilize with protein based fertilizers like ground corn, wheat, soy, canola, cottonseed, coffee, milo, etc.

If you have the budget for it, you could use 20 pounds of lava sand per 1,000 square feet along with the corn meal on the surface. I'm not convinced it works but there are many people around Texas who are convinced it works. Very convinced. So I'm just presenting it as an option for you.

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PostPosted: Mon Sep 01, 2003 8:09 am 
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Location: Flower Mound
Quote:
Very serious penetration problem!!

What happens when it rains? does the rain just roll off? Does anything grow in it? -weeds or anything?


Well, don't laugh, but when it rains or I use my sprinkler system, the wate runs off after about 5 minutes. There is no such thing as watering deeply.

Over the past 8 years, I have fought weeds constanly because the bermuda grass would not grow very well. Finally, about 3 years ago, I replaced all the burmuda grass with St. Augustine, because I figured it grew more on the surface than very deep. It seems to be working OK, except for a couple of places in my back yard that are very thin. (Those were the worst places for the bermuda also.). I have done large flower beds around the perimeter of the back yard in which I brought in lots of compost, etc. Even in those areas, if you go down past the compost amendments, you will still run into the hard orange stuff that just seems to sit there without being improved. And, those beds have been in place for about 5 years.

Are you saying that the compost, etc. should eventually change the native soil that is here, or that it will just build another layer on top of what is here? Should I put all the amendments you are recommending on top of my existing lawn?

Thank you for all the help and advice you are giving me.


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PostPosted: Tue Sep 02, 2003 12:21 am 
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I'm saying the topdressing of compost will improve the native soil.

You're saying it hasn't in 5 years of trying. Hmmm. What you have is a crust formed up there. I don't suppose you want to stampede some cattle to crush up that crust do you? It sounds like sandstone. Even the standard tools would have trouble with that.

When you drilled it, did you penetrate the layer to the point where water would flow into the hole?

I'm thinking you need a really good soil test in a bad way. It sounds like you have a naturally occurring problem. Something is going on with your minerals to form a really good adobe on you. Check with your local county extension service first. If they cannot help you, then try K Chandler at Texas Plant and Soil Lab.

http://www.txplant-soillab.com/

Just for grins, have you taken a half cup of "soil" and put it into a jar of water and swirled it around to see what proportion of clay, sand, and loam you have?

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PostPosted: Tue Sep 02, 2003 9:17 am 
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Location: Flower Mound
When you drilled it, did you penetrate the layer to the point where water would flow into the hole?

When I drilled into, in some places I never got past the orange layer, and then in others I could break through that stuff and get to some yellowish/brown looking clay. When we built the house, there were many vacants lots that had not been built on, and they all looked like this stuff. There were some hugh boulders made out of this same stuff that they took out of the lot behind us. One side of my yard in the front is the yellow clay stuff, but then there are large pockets of this orange stuff.

None of the holes I have dug for planting small trees have been deep enough to get past the orange layer. Sometimes, one side of the hole will be more like the clay and the other side will be the orange stuff.

After watching the trees I have planted, it seems like they have a hard time growing for a few years, and then, if they can get past the orange layer, they take off like crazy. I planted two chinese pitashe trees that were the same size at planting, and one of them is at least 3 times bigger than the other one. It wasn't until this year that the smaller one finally started growing - and I know it was planted in a part of the yard that had more of the orange layer. They have been planted for about 5 years.

I will contact the extension service up in Denton County and also the link that you provided. By the way, how do you do the soil in the jar of water test? I don't know about that one. Thanks.


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PostPosted: Tue Sep 02, 2003 12:00 pm 
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Here's a link to doing the soil test in a jar.

http://www.gardengatemagazine.com/basics/g29soil3.html

All it measures is how much sand, silt, and clay you have. But that's good info, especially in your case.

You might possibly have the worst soil I've ever heard of. Well, maybe solid rock is worse. My college room mate's house was built on a hill that they scraped the top off of. His sub soil, if you could call it that, was a solid piece of granite under the entire neighborhood. They had to bring in something to grow things in so they used some of the decomposed granite sand that they didn't haul away. It ended up being decomposed granite sand on top of solid granite. At least they had something soft on top. You don't. Yours is worse.

I'm very interested in the results from your jar test. Please write back.

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PostPosted: Thu Sep 04, 2003 11:27 am 
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Location: Flower Mound, Texas
I live in FM also and I have the soil you are talking about. This is the imported soil the builder puts down to build up the site and later for grading. The stuff is really pretty bad. I had it analysed it was deficient in everything but sulpher and calcium. No organic content. When dry it is bone hard and when wet it becomes a muddy mess(looks to have a lot of sand and a bit of mud). Water seeps through it pretty rapidly though. I have to water the burmuda lawn quite frequently since the water just drains down.

I put down some lava sand, green sand, organic fertilizer and dried molases and the lawn looks much better.

As for beds I got a dump truck of top soil and created raised beds. Incorporated compost into it and my plants seem to be doing fine for now. The few things I have grown in the 'Orange stuff' has barely grown an inch in a year.


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PostPosted: Thu Sep 04, 2003 12:37 pm 
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I think the "orange stuff" you are referring to is commonly called builders sand. It is used under most concrete structures to level or build up the grade before pouring the concrete. Almost every post tension house slab has this stuff under the black plastic the concrete is poured on. Depending on how much was left over, they usually just spread it around the site.
Tony M


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PostPosted: Mon Sep 08, 2003 1:08 pm 
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Location: Frisco,TEXAS
My new house in Frisco has an engineered slab foundation that's getting poured this week. There are several good size piles of this builder's sand left over. Should I insist that the builder haul it away?

I think it's a clay soil there in Frisco, and I've read that one of the ways to improve clay is to amend it with a LOT of this builder's sand to the point where 20-25% of the volume is the new sand.

But if you use too little sand, they say you wind up with rock hard adobe like the poster from Flower Mound.

So what do you suggest?


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PostPosted: Mon Sep 08, 2003 8:46 pm 
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Don't try to amend your clay by mixing in sand. It won't improve the soil and will actually worsen it. What you need to mix in is compost and rock powders such as green sand and lava sand. Builders sand does not have the qualities that are necessary to build the soil and it will just ruin the soil structure.

Marlyn


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