West coast gardeners!!! Help a brotha out!

whatsup all you west coast growers (especially those in the bay area, cali). i have a slight dilemma about my soil. First off, i want to remind you guys that the soil on the cali coast mountains is very clay-like. It doesn't drain well. Heres my plan:
I have 5 early misty and 5 safari mix seeds going right now.
I want to let them grow a few weeks, and maybe on 420 move them to my guerrilla spot.
Before moving them over, i need to prepare the soil because there is no way I can grow in it, without the roots drowning etc.
What i need help on is what to do for this soil. I have a local shop that sells Sunshine Mix plating soil for 12$ for 3.8 cubic feet. I also want to add some of my own grass clippings to help with drainage and composting, but i still don't know what to do about water pooling up at the bottom of the holes i dig. Also, to make things worse, I want to add water holding crystals because i wont be able to water very often. Any tips on what to do? Its a very complicated issue... thanks for reading

i am not a 100% sure but i would say for better draining add perlite or peat moss. and mybe dig ur hole deeper and more potting soil. but like i said im not a 100% sure, i am a new grower and have similar questions. good luck with the grow!!!

I would treat the soil like a pot, and make it extra deep and put in gravel, maybe even some carbon, on the bottom to allow for some drainage.

It's clay if you hit the other NorCal mountains, too. Red, sticky-ass NON-draining clay.

its not really red, but it is the color like in my picture below.
what i am most worried about is water pooling in the bottom of the hole...
since it doesnt drain at all, wouldnt it just make a puddle and drown my root? any way to prevent that?

Orange Shovel CAGrower said:

its not really red, but it is the color like in my picture below.
what i am most worried about is water pooling in the bottom of the hole...
since it doesnt drain at all, wouldnt it just make a puddle and drown my root? any way to prevent that?

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don't water as often?

Orange Shovel CAGrower said:

its not really red, but it is the color like in my picture below.
what i am most worried about is water pooling in the bottom of the hole...
since it doesnt drain at all, wouldnt it just make a puddle and drown my root? any way to prevent that?

Click to expand...

Make a thick layer of gravel, up to several inches.. Lay a piece of weedcloth or something to prevent your planting medium from filtering down into the gravel. By doing that you're preventing the soil itself from staying really wet and giving the water someplace to go, which is the whole issue, right?

My line of thinking here is that since the soil (if you wanna call it that) doesn't percolate, you're essentially growing in a sort of biological container. Does that make sense? I'm thinking it might be easier to both prevent overwatering as well as possibly prevent anaerobic conditions in the soil with a gravel bed on which the soil lies. Make that hole a few inches deeper to give you the room for the gravel and I think it might work out just fine. Maybe make the planting medium especially drain-ee (shit my brain's going to hell right now), sand or perlite to add to its draining ability like someone else mentioned, mayhaps?

In the end it could help you since I think you mentioned you're not going to be able to spend much time tending to this group's watering needs. You might even be able to not have to use those... crystal things.. that hold water, I think you mentioned something about that.

fdd2blk said:

don't water as often?

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i see what you mean but it will rain, and the water will pool up. i think i will have to go with the gravel idea. could i just dig a deep enough hole that gravel wouldn't be needed? im trying to minimize waterings without drowning the roots in clay soil...kind of a hard task. im a noob when it comes to soil, thanks for ur help guys.

Orange Shovel CAGrower said:

i see what you mean but it will rain, and the water will pool up. i think i will have to go with the gravel idea. could i just dig a deep enough hole that gravel wouldn't be needed? im trying to minimize waterings without drowning the roots in clay soil...kind of a hard task. im a noob when it comes to soil, thanks for ur help guys.

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Uh uh, the soil will act as a wick. You need a place for the water to go so that it's not in direct contact with the soil. A San Angelo spike (I think that's what it's called) can be really helpful to chunk up hard clay. One end has a spike and the other is more like a blade. I think we bought ours at Lowe's for about $25. It's heavy (for me at least) and about 6' long.

i cant seems to find that type of spike...could i just aerate the clay and turn it over, break it up, etc. and hope that it drains well?

Orange Shovel CAGrower said:

i cant seems to find that type of spike...could i just aerate the clay and turn it over, break it up, etc. and hope that it drains well?

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Its called a PICK AXE or Mattock or a Miners Axe in most places,you can buy small ones that are about twice the size of a household hammer.

I live in BC, just a bit north of Seattle. And I did a fairly large outdoor grow a few years ago. I found a spot near a creek that was more of a marsh than anything. I took big enough pots to grow em massive and put em into the ground a tiny bit(3-4") then let the rest sit out top. had a few holes for air on the sides of them and that was it. Put them out near the end of April and let them do their thing. I maybe watered a dozen times over the summer. The ground kept them perfect. Only had to water when we didn't see rain for a week at a time. Grew to about 10' lol

This spike is 6' long, it ain't no pick axe. But that's ok, I don't think it really matters what is used. I just suggested it because it makes breaking up our ground (also very rocky) a helluva lot easier. You could even take a piece of rebar and grind down one end to make a spike and use that (we did that to punch holes in the baffles of my bike's stock muffler, it's easy and sparkly).