JohnV wrote:Trying to condition heavy clay soil is hard and sometimes still not a good veggie growing medium. It can soak up just as much money than just buying in some good garden soil and building the garden bed up more . Just break up the top soil down to the first clay layer then put good garden soil on top of that . Build a containing wall around it with sleepers or rough saw timber , rocks whatever . 200 to 300 mm is all you really need above the original ground level for the plants but some people go much higher for their backs . However then it takes way more soil and gets too expensive . I have had good service out of Cyclone shovels and other Cyclone garden tools . When you dig with a long handled shovel into virgin soil , once you work the head down don't just yank it back . Push it back and forward a bit as you work it down then push more forward to break the soils hold then pull back and lever the sod out . If digging with a fork go over the patch and just push holes in the ground and then water the patch really well . Leave it overnight then fork it . For garden forks look at Ames or Spear and Jackson .
Yeah we have raised beds too for the delicate stuff and the things the kangaroos like to steal, but it's not really practical for everything. I've got about 80m2 of potatoes and sweet potatoes in at the moment, which would be a lot of raised beds.
It's not ideal still i know but it lets me do what i can with what I've got. My general approach is to make a new bed with the fork, plant potatoes (they aren't fussy with soil) and wait. Potatoes add a lot of carbon to the soil and do a surprisingly good job of breaking up clay. After a season, the soil still isn't perfect but it's 10x better than what you started with. After that, amend with woodchips, manure, etc.
It works, as long as you don't break too many tools doing it.