How to turn compacted soil without wrecking your back

Hard ground is not one problem, it is two

Everybody who has tried to get a spade into a dry Strathalbyn backyard in the middle of summer has had the same thought, which is that this soil is basically concrete and something has gone badly wrong with it. Usually nothing has. Ground goes hard for two quite different reasons, and the reason matters, because the fix for one does almost nothing for the other and that is where most of the wasted effort goes.

The first is compaction, which is just air being squeezed out of the soil by feet, wheels, a trampoline that lived in the same spot for two years, or rain landing on bare dirt with nothing to break its fall. The second is clay, which is hard because of what the particles are rather than how tightly they are packed, and no amount of digging changes that on its own.

The test that tells you which one you have

Take a dry crumb of the soil, about the size of a marble, and drop it into a clear glass of water without stirring it. Leave it alone for a few hours and come back. If the crumb holds its shape or breaks into smaller crumbs and the water stays reasonably clear, you have a soil with decent structure that has been compacted, and opening it up mechanically will genuinely help. If it slumps into a cloudy haze and the water goes milky, you have a dispersive clay, and that one wants gypsum and organic matter rather than a bigger tool.

It is a slow test and it is worth doing once, because it saves you doing the wrong job for three seasons running.

Work it damp, not wet

This is the bit that gets skipped and it does more damage than anything else on this page. Digging or forking soil while it is wet smears the particles together and destroys the structure you were trying to create, so you end up with something worse than you started with, and it can take a year to come back. Bone dry is not much better, because you are just breaking it into dust and hurting yourself doing it.

What you want is soil that holds together when you squeeze it and falls apart when you poke it. If you cannot get there, water the area well and give it a couple of days before you start.

The tool that actually does this, and how to use it

A garden fork, used properly, will open a bed with a fraction of the effort a spade takes, and the trick is that you are not lifting anything. You push the tines in to full depth with your foot, pull the handle back until you feel the ground crack, and then pull it out and move a hand span along and do it again. The soil lifts and drops back into place with air in it, and nothing gets turned over or thrown about.

For a bed you have already opened once, or for working compost into the top of a bed, a three or five prong cultivator is the easier thing, because you drag it through rather than driving it in and your shoulders do far less of the work. For a small patch or a pot, a hand cultivator does the same job kneeling down.

If you have been looking at those twist handled claw tools online, a garden fork you probably already own will do the same job on a bed that is genuinely worth forking, and a cultivator handles everything after that.

The option nobody mentions, which is not digging at all

If the bed is not planted yet and you are not in a hurry, you can skip the digging entirely. Lay cardboard or a thick layer of newspaper over the ground, put compost and manure on top of that to a decent depth and mulch over it. Water the lot in and leave it alone. The worms come up to feed on it and do the mixing for you from underneath, which is the only aeration that lasts, because a fork opens soil for a season and a worm population opens it for good.

It takes a couple of months rather than an afternoon, so it suits a bed you are planning rather than one you are planting on the weekend. On heavy ground it is often the better answer anyway.

Keeping it open once it is open

Soil that has been loosened and then left bare goes straight back to hard, because rain hits it directly and packs it down again. Mulch is what stops that, and it is the cheapest insurance in the garden. Keep off the beds as much as you can, and put a path or a stepping stone wherever you catch yourself walking, because your own feet are the most reliable cause of compaction in any backyard.

Nobody starts out knowing any of this, and I am self taught on most of it through trial and error and a lot of Googling. If you are not sure which of the two problems you have got, bring a handful of the soil in and we will have a look at it with you.

Shop related products

• Brunnings Ultimate Dig It In Compost 30L. Organic matter to work through the top of a bed once it is open.
• Naturally Good Cow Manure 25L. Goes on top for the no dig method, or through the soil if you are forking.
• Neutrog Whoflungdung Mulch 20kg. Mulch over the lot so the rain stops packing it back down.
• Seasol Seaweed Concentrate 1L. Water it in after planting to help roots get going in the new ground.

Did you know we also keep the digging gear in store, and it is not on the website. Forged garden forks with the poly D handle, three prong and five prong cultivators on fibreglass handles, a hand cultivator for pots and small beds, and garden gypsum in 10kg and 20kg bags for the clay. Give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what is on the shelf.

The rest of the range is in garden products. Bags of compost and manure add up quickly, so if you are doing a whole bed our local delivery runs Tuesdays and Thursdays, $5 around Strathalbyn and $10 on the regional run.

Keep reading

• How to build better soil in any garden
• How to make compost at home without it going wrong
• How do I plant a tree?

My instinct with hard ground is still to hit it harder, and that is exactly the instinct worth ignoring.

Candeece