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I'm looking for suggestions on amending my clay soil. I suspect that the builders scraped away a good portion of the original topsoil when they cleared the woods that used to be here. Construction wrapped up 3 years ago, so my lot has about 3" of fairly decomposed soil over a layer of very compressed clay (thanks to the bulldozers and graders). My lawn's fine, but my flower beds need help. The only addition since construction was a 3" layer of shredded wood mulch a year ago. I want to amend the soil to loosen it up and make it easier to work, but there's one huge problem.
My legs are paralyzed so I'm in a wheelchair.
I live alone, so there's typically nobody here to mess with my yard but me. My arms are more than strong enough to maneuver my wheelchair through the lawn, and by popping a wheelie I can "beach" my chair part way into any flowerbed. As a result I can reach the first two or three feet of the bed and dig to my heart's content. Unfortunately my chair bogs down when I get all four wheels onto the mulch (even with mountain bike tires on the rear wheels ... I've tried it). For obvious reasons I can't operate a rototiller either. In some places the flower beds extend over 15 feet from the edge of the lawn to the wall of my house.
On the plus side, the homeowners' association pays a landscaping firm to add mulch to the beds every year or two. The landscapers are helpful guys, since I always coincidentally (*cough*) have a case of cold beer around every time they come through. If I were to have a waiting pile of mulch or topsoil or somesuch, they'd surely spread it for me. They won't till it or turn over the soil, but I have to take what I can get. Whatever gets spread onto the beds will have to naturally decompose and mix with what's already there. I'll be living here for several years yet, so I can afford to be patient as I wait for the soil to improve.
So if you were me, what would you have waiting in a pile when the landscapers arrive in the spring?
I know the persuasive power of beer firsthand. I buy a case of something cheap like Coors or Bud for the landscapers, but always keep the good beer in my dedicated beer fridge.
This message was edited Dec 4, 2007 9:55 PM
This message was edited Dec 5, 2007 11:16 AM
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