Some groundbreaking ideas for compacted soil

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A problem I have even in my tiny little garden is hard soil. In time soil compacts when left open or with very little vegetation. Wind and water removes everything that is not compacted. Even regular rain does nor stop this because even if it soaks in, it dries eventually leaving it compacted.

The usual answer we have in the garden is the pickaxe and spade. I remember back-breaking days trying to break enough soil to get some plants into the garden. Back-breaking days whisking there were a different way.

At some point someone that pigs is a solution. Pigs will plow up anything. They will dig for food. If you want to dig up a tree stump, just scatter some maize around it. If you keep up the scattering they will keep digging.

This is a wonderful idea I thought. Then I stepped out of the door. In my little 4 x 6 meter garden even one pig will be a disaster. There will be no garden left.

I thought of chickens as a possible solution. They are perpetual scratchers destroying seedlings and eating seeds. They are perfect for ground clearing. Their digging have no depth though. They will loosen the top inch or so and that is that. Keeping chickens are not allowed where I stay anyhow. I am planning to move

Being my lazy self I had to find another solution.

Then I found another solution. In my tiny back yard the soil compacted to the point where even the grass did not want to grow there.
Imagine, around here we grow Kikuyu grass for lawns. That stuff grows anywhere but in my garden it's like trying to grow it on a cement slab.

Eventually I found a solution that loosened the soil enough to plant without any back-breaking digging. I could get a spade in deep enough to put in seedlings and saplings.

It happened because I were lazy. I started yard cleaning and decided to start a big pile. Packed a square base but the big never happened. Life is full of distractions.

I left a square about a foot deep.

Two months later I started to gather my "big pile" into a small heap. Then I noticed that the ground were slightly different and tried it with a garden fork.

The fork went in with medium effort. The moisture that seeped through from the plant layer not only left the soil moist, it encouraged a whole ecosystem of little creatures loosening the ground in their normal process of living. This allowed me to plant some soil breakers.

Different plants have different root systems. When rehabilitating compacted soil the best plants to put in are those with taproot. They naturally drill down and open the soil. In the vegetable garden two good examples I call to mind is carrots and parsley. I am sure you can name a few more.

The taproots is a long term solution. You can interplant and eventually replace if you want depending what you want in your garden.

That then is the short version of my struggle with compacted soil.