Bexar County, Texas
Zone 9a
Heavy clay soil
I plan to move cactus from pots to ground. I set up an area that gets full sun 10+ hours. I need to build soil up since yard has heavy clay.
I was thinking a base of lava rock and then a mix of play sand, perlite and miracle grow cactus soil. All from big box store. I’m trying to do this as economical as possible.
I forgot to take measurement of blocked off area; will update tomorrow. I already removed the grass.
by Mysterious_Quail_469
4 Comments
I might catch hate for this but…
I’ve had tremendous success using AI for all my gardening. All my transplants have gone extremely well from the soil compositions and everything else it suggested
Will these be okay where you live over winter? I did a bed with prickly pears and Texas hibiscus. I basically made each hole its own thing, instead of doing the whole bed. I have clay too. So I amended that with compost, and cover the whole bed with a plastic. Then I cut x’s where I wanted plants and dug holes and filled with the proper mix for the plant in mind. When I had plants where I wanted them with the proper soil in the holes I covered the plastic with rocks and sand for esthetics. I can get a picture tomorrow when the suns up. This is summer number two and its doing very well.
https://preview.redd.it/gb6qll282pug1.jpeg?width=3060&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d29dd9642447ed04f0bc2a3da0d78e90af9cbdeb
I have clay soil, too. I can’t get my hands on lava rock so I use gravel as the first layer.
After that, I mix 1/3 very coarse sand, 1/3 potting soil, 1/3 existing soil (pure clay)
If you want to go cheap, get coarse sand from a builders supply. A big bag is literally dirt cheap.
The potting soil is also much cheaper in big bags.
Before I plant, I check for drainage.