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If clay is so bad for growing things, how was my clay-filled subdivision ever a farm?

I live in an area with lots of clay, and I’ve been reading up on how to grow things in it. So many websites made it sound like clay is so bad. In a discussion my husband asked me “If clay is so bad, how did anyone ever farm here?” because our entire subdivision was a farm up until the 1950s. I think it’s a pretty good question. So is clay really not that bad or was it probably a not-so-successful farm?

Public Comments

1. if its possible they probably removed some clay and replaced it with soil. thats what my mom does. if she finds clay she will throw it under the deck or back in the bushes. she always puts miracle grow soil around her flowers every year. but u have a point.
2. clay hold lots of good stuff for plants and trees etc its just not in a form that can be used by them, so by adding compost, sand, mulch, etc it will break these down in the clay so the plants can draw them up.
3. Most of the topsoil was stripped off (and probably sold) when the subdivision was being built, leaving only the clay subsoil and very little or no topsoil. Bert
4. Clay can be good or bad for plants. Some plants can survive in clay soil while for others it can't because the clay holds the water for a longer period than ordinary soil and there are some plants that just can't deal with too much water. Too much water can cause the plant to rot. Also the nutrients in the clay maybe too rich for some plants.
5. I suspect the clay was put on the land before building on it and used as fill so the foundations of the houses could be solid. It's also possible that if you dig in the clay, you will find construction debris and possibly landfill debris.
6. It could be that the farm was not all that sucessful. However, there is a more likely answer. When subdivisions are built, most (in many instances all) of the top soil is scraped off down to subsoil that is structurally bearing soil. Top soil has too much organic material in it to allow for the types of compaction necessary to build foundations on. More often than not, some of the top soil is stock piled and used later during the landscaping process. In some instances this does not occur and in many instances the top soil is actually sold off to others. Now for your problem. Clay in and off itself is not all bad. Clay is good a retaining moisture. The down-side is that you need to add soil amendments to it to make it garden loam. First off you will need to add organics to it. The most common ones are redwood soil conditioner, bark soil conditioner and agricultural wastes such as ground almond hulls. These should have been composted before you buy them. Using uncomposted material strips nitrogen and other nutrients from your soil to breakdown the organics....so again use material that is already composted. Another good choice used by many professional landscapers but viewed by home owners as "icky" is sewage sludge. This is the organic sludges discharged by the anaerobic digestors at your local sewage plant. At small plants it is discharged into open fields where it air dries until it can be handled by earth moving equipment and either ground up and sold ..or trucked off to landfill. It is actually perfectfully safe to use and is the best organic amendment for horticultural purposes. It sometimes is less suitable for food gardening applications not because it poses a disease risk....but rather because of possible heavy metal ( cadmium, berylium, mercury )accumulations in the sludge. But for lawns, shrubs and trees it is absolutely first rate. Whichever organic you use, you will need quite a bit of it. For lawns 4-8 inches of amendment should be used over the existing soil. Four inches can be rototilled in. Eight inches is generally easier to do in two passes....rototilling in four inches...reapplying a second four inches and rotatilling again. For shrubs and trees, of the soil that you back fill with should consist of about fifty percent organic amendments. Try not to buy it in bags unless you need truly tiny quantities. Bagged organic amendments are ghastly expensive. To cover four inches deep you will need one cubic yard (27 cubic feet) to cover an area 9 feet by 9 feet. Buy it in bulk if you need much of it. You can often haul it yourself on a trailer or in a pickup. You can also get it delivered. Please e-mail me if you have any questions. Hope that this helps
7. It got sold off as a farm because they ran out of topsoil, and there's only so much that the chemical fertilizers can do to make up for it. Also, digging to build the subdivision probably completely disrupted what little soil structure was left after the chemicals and plowing. Follow that with several decades of dumping lawn chemicals and raking up every stray leaf, and you get totally exhausted soil that hasn't been able to replenish itself. My husband and I bought a farm with worn out soil over 10 years ago. The first year, there were wide patches of empty soil well into August, interspersed with anemic looking patches of weeds. Now, it's fully grassed over, with a wide variety of clovers and local wildflowers, and the occasional young tree. We graze a donkey, a cow, a few goats, and a flock of geese, and they keep invasives chewed back and spread fertilizer for us. The topsoil is still very thin, but it is coming back. Clay isn't really a bad thing, it's just that the plants need more than clay by itself to do well. Subdivision clay tends to be pretty compacted, and it doesn't drain well. Plant roots need air as much as they need water to function well, and the clay structure is too solid to allow that to happen. Deep rooted perennials like goldenrod and fleabane are natures answer to breaking that up, but of course in a lawn those are called weeds. Also, worms and other dirt critters that keep soil aerated need organic matter to eat (dead grass, leaves, etc.) so they don't see much action in a fiercely manicured lawn. You also need a wide variety of microbial life to keep the soil healthy, and chemical fertilizers tend to kill them off. If you are interested in turning things around, I would recommend learning to compost. You can even take advantage of your neighbors mowing and raking and use the leaves and grass clippings for mulch.
8. There are a lot of different soils that are called clay soils but are not all clay. there is clay,sandy clay, silty clay,clay loam,silty clay loam, and sandy clay loam.all of these maybe called clay by different people. clay is hard when its dry and slick when its wet. we farm a clay loam and grow good crops on it, however not as good as some with less clay. chances are where you are at is not pure clay and it maybe the crops could have been better. one thing about a soil with a lot of clay once it gets wet it holds moisture well where as sandy soil dries out very quickly. look up the USDA soil triangle on the Internet and it will explain it well for you.
9. Pondlady is right they truck in red clay as fill because its Dirt cheap (Get it) They cover all the good dirt with it that the farmer had used. Clay can be okay for growing stuff in as well. You just need to till it up and possibly add some soil conditioner.