Question
I live in Southern California and my husband and I plan to lay St. Augustine or maybe Bermuda sod to our backyard.  But I'm worried that my investment will die because we have the heavy clay soil.  During the construction of our new home, the city made our contractor compacted the ground and therefore our contractor had to fill our property with some kind of dirt and now my soil is like clay and so tightly compacted. We tried planting a few trees and shrubs last week and the ground was so hard to dig into.  When I touch the wet soil, the soil stuck together like clay.  And when I squeeze it, it just flattens and doesn't break apart into particles.  We were told by friends to by gypsum which we did but I read online that gypsum alone isn't going to condition our soil and that we needed manure and other things.  Can you help us with that?  We need to know if we can get our soil back to it's original state because we love to garden.  If so, what do we need to buy and where do find it.

Thank you.

Answer
Mimi. I'm on the road at this time. You need to install Kikuyu Sod. Check out my Web site and call me. Kikuyu grass will work the the best in clay soil. My web site is www.emeraldkikuyu.com. I'm also in So california. Hope this will help you
Gene