As long as this discussion has been resurrected - One Yard Revolution did a good video a couple of years ago comparing minerals added to the soil with rock dust versus leaves. Interestingly, the leaves came out on top as the better source of minerals. Which makes sense - the trees roots go down deep and pull up minerals from the soil the end up in the leaves, which are them deposited on the ground. It's nature's way of replenishing those minerals back in the top foot of soil where most biology happens.

Here is how you solve this problem. Place three inches of a good rich compost over the area you want to loosen up. Water it well. I mean saturate it three or four days a week. In four months you will have soil you can dig with a teaspoon. Do not, I REPEAT do not try to loosen clay dirt with sand. Clay + sand = cement. Microbial matter is what loosen's soil. By soaking the compost with water you are letting the microbes in the compost enter the soil so they can to do their thing - loosen the soil. Or, put your compost pile over where you eventually will wnat to have a garden. You will accomplish the same thing I already said to do. The earth under a compost pile will be the softest, most wonderful soil you could ever imagine having. Some people move the locaton of their compost pile avery couple of years for just this reason. Or, you could rent a heavy tiller and till in 4 incnes of pure compost - twice. Compost buffers the soil's ph and it puts organic material into the soil so it will stay soft. If you till soil without putting in enough organic material you will have rockhard soil again in a matter of weeks because you have not changed the compostion of the soil. Having clay soily is like walking a great big deck of playing cards. Clay particlse are big and thin. Organic material works it's way in between the particles - which allows air and water to move around in the soil. If you don't change the soil you will have what you always have. Water will not soften clay soil - organic matter will. Don't try to burry your scraps in the ground thinkingthe coons or rats, or other critters will not find it and dig it up. Unless you burry it a couple of feet deep they are going to find it and dig it up. Other than a stand-alone compoist pile, you hsve four choices. Make a raised bed. Make a lazagna bed. Do what I described above. Use a tiller to get as much (and I mean as much) organic material as deep into the soil as possible. For clay soil as hard as you descibe I would till 4" into the ground and then do another 4". Finally, remember, organic matter breaks down over time. If you don't continually add organic matter to the soil it will eventually revert back to the rock-hard dirt that you have now. Keeping soil soft and fluffy is an ongoing process. It is not a set-it-and-forget-it thing. Organic mateial has to be replenished in order to keep the microbial life alive. When you realize it you will understand that it is the living microbesd and their dead bodies that actually gets in between the clay particles and keeps them from sticking together. As the soil loosens, allowing air and water to freeely move, you will get worms to come because the living conditions will be good and there will be lots of microbes for the worms to eat. Yep, microbes are earthworm food - they don't have teeth to chomp lettuce, saw dust, garden waste, etc. They eat bacteria and fungi. You can only turn your hard clay dirt into soil by incorporating lots and lots of organic matierial into it. Tom P.S. If you till the garden bed, only do it this one time to get the process started. Aftre that just put the compost into the areas where you inend to plant crops. There is no need to till because the microbes move with the water as their mode of transportanion.

Thanks Barb. Should you ever be in the Detroit area and want to see some of the areas finest gardens, let me know. I have friends with palatial homes and properties that far surpass my humble homestead. It's fun being on garden tours with their gardens as most people can relate more to my small surroundings. Having been at this home just four years I look forward to getting back on the garden tour circuit when I'm done doing/re-doing my garden. I use my iPhone to take the pics so they only show a small portion at a time so the number of pics might portray a larger property. A pool in your backyard? Sounds like a future pond to me! The pic attached here shows almost half my backyard but much of its blocked by plants. LOL Don. Didn't you see Kens thread with his pics of his yellow Wu's? Yes, they exist. And yes, I want one! Maybe he'd take an eye of a Gunthers Prize as a trade?

Dilly, this is where you want to be careful to separate what is possible from what is being done. I googled the phrase: the gene from a fish that lives in very cold seas has been inserted into a strawberry, allowing the fruit to be frost-tolerant. I found more than a page of sites that quotes that phrase, all from the anti-groups, and stated as fact. Then, I clicked on a link that wasn't an anti-group, and I pulled up what I believe is the correct version of the strawberry fish story: Genetic engineering involves the disarranging and recombining of gene fragments, often of unrelated species. By cutting a fragment of a genetic sequence and pasting it into cells of an unrelated species, scientists can insert a gene of one organism into an unrelated one. As a result, a plant may be fooled into accepting messages that turn its leaves a different colour, or promoters may be introduced into fish genes so they will respond in a desired manner when transferred into the cell of a strawberry eg producing a hormone for cold tolerance. While it has become well established in agriculture, genetic engineering is largely at the experimental stage in aquaculture. Most commonly, aquaculturists improve stocks or species by using the sperm of one strain or variety to fertilize the eggs of another. For example, a salmon farmer who wants to produce fish with high oil content may cross-breed a colder water salmon stock with another stock that is adapted to the warmer environment where the offspring are intended to be grown. Genetic engineering offers a speedier road to the same destination. And this from a PBS link: Moving genes across species to produce so-called transgenic life forms seems to many a radical step. One experiment, proposed but never carried out, to splice a flounder gene into a strawberry to protect it from frost, has caught the public imagination. It's the stuff of fear and myth. What have we created, fish or strawberry? I'm not trying to change anyone's minds about this, but I don't like the fear mongering. I want to let scientists experiment in all directions. It doesn't mean that we are going to have a world full of strawberry fish or pork potatoes.