How To Improve Clay Soil

I spent many days and nights scouring the internet for gardening ideas. How to improve clay soil? How to get young seedlings to grow? How to get abundant harvest without breaking the bank? 

The disadvantage of gardening in a city like Toronto, is that most things need to be bought. Plants, top soil, mulch, rocks, down to the turkey poop - cost money. (This is real, we picked up a giant 20kg bag of organic turkey trot from a nursery. Because of the large area, that $70 + hours of gas & driving, the impact on the soil fertility was negligible.) 

We find that store bought garden soil does not provide enough nutritions for our plants (yup, that includes the expensive $10 25L bag of fancy garden soil). As we have a large area to cover, it is cost prohibitive to replace all the top soil and amend with compost and fertilizer. To put that in picture, in 3 years 960 bags of 25L soil were used in our 1,000 sq ft garden. 

In our desperation to grow something in our clay soil, we used expensive potting mix, cattle manure, 4-in-1, to the cheap nameless top soil. I tested mixing 4-in-1 with our clay soil. It looked promising when the soil was wet, but once it dried, it looked as if I never added anything there - it was rock hard. 

Here, I share the results of my "research" and experiments. Free and no strings attached. May the information be of use to you and assist you on your gardening journey! 

Cheers!