Clodagh & Dick Handscombe are active gardeners and authors living in Spain. They have written a trilogy of books – Your garden in Spain, Growing healthy fruit in Spain and Growing healthy vegetables in Spain.
As well as contributing to the Allotment Chat forums they have their own web site called and about Gardening in Spain
They’ve kindly provided an article for the site about improving clay soils. Although it’s obviously from a Spanish angle, there’s a fair bit of help for us in wetter lands. I dread to think what gardening on soil used to make bricks is like in the first year!
They make the point that the Spanish who have abandoned the annual improvement of soil with natural manures now use excessive amounts of water and inorganic fertilizers which results in vegetable vulnerable to insect and fungal attack as well as being “rather watery and lacking taste”
So, if you have a clay soil, take a look at Improving Clay Soils
