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topsoil

Screened top soil is it good quality soil or not?  Need good soil due to plot having clay soil. 

 

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  • waterbuttswaterbutts Posts: 1,270

    It's a bit of a pig in a poke.

    Choose a reputable company and ask them where they get their soil from. Go for the best quality you can afford.

    Definitely don't buy it from a man with a van. All sort so hidden nightmares await you in the form of poisoned earth, pernicious weeds etc.

    If your soil is clay then it isn't necessarily poor soil, just claggy. There are various soil improvers for sale or blends of top soil and manure that you can have delivered.

  • I've known screened topsoil to turn out to be the dried out washings from a sugar beet factory!

    As far as I'm aware, the term screened just means that it's been passed through a sort of sieve, removing weeds, roots, stones etc.  It will not remove weed seeds or spores of horrid things like Mare's Tail.  The soil needs to have been sourced from a plot without these things growing in it.


    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • I agree with waterbutts and would also suggest improving what you have.  Clay soil is usually very fertile just difficult to work with.  Digging-in as much organic matter as you can lay your hands on (eg mushroom compost) and adding grit will really help.

    A trowel in the hand is worth a thousand lost under a bush.
  • Just thought I'd add that in the 1950s my parents bought a farm which had very heavy clay soil - good drainage and the application of lots and lots of farmyard manure and good cultivation (not going on it when wet being very important) resulted in it becoming some of the most productive arable land in East Anglia, fetching a record price per acre for that area when the family farm was sold.   


    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • waterbuttswaterbutts Posts: 1,270

    Roses love clay soil too.image

  • Two years ago I had 2 cubic metres of top soil delivered as was levelling up my garden. Fine sieved soil which has grown lovely flowers, weed free.  This was from Cullompton.  My soil is very sandy and now I am adding cow manure by the load, excellent up to press.

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