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Rant: everyone on here says build raised beds first, but my clay yard needed the opposite
I tore out four raised cedar beds in my Tulsa backyard in March after watching them dry out every single July, no matter how much I watered. Everyone at the garden center kept telling me raised beds were the only way, but my soil is heavy red clay that holds water fine once you break it up with a tiller and 3 inches of compost. I put those four beds' worth of dirt straight into the ground and my peppers did better than they had in 3 summers. Has anyone else in a clay soil area gone the other way and skipped the beds completely?
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davis.noah18d ago
That "brick and stays wet" line is real, a buddy in Mississippi broke a shovel on his.
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the_mary18d ago
Clay isn't the same everywhere and that's the part people skip. Tulsa clay is heavy but it still drains, just slow, so raised beds dry out fast on top of it. My cousin in west Tennessee has that black gumbo stuff that turns into a brick and stays wet all spring, and raised beds saved her garden because the roots never sat in water. So saying clay soil means skip the beds only works if your clay drains at all. If water sits in a hole for two days after a rain, raised beds are not the problem, drainage is. You did the right thing for your yard, just don't want folks with a different clay reading this and ripping out beds they actually need.
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