Steve Sanders wrote:
s. lowe wrote:More specifics will depend on how you want to use it in the future (do you want a 6 acre field? A food forest? A patchwork of gardens and small orchards?
It'll be used as a patchwork of gardens and small orchards - certainly not a 6 acre field. Regarding the tractor, thanks for the ideas.
Well in that case, and considering that you have so much wooded land as well, I would still get a cover crop in broadly but then you could start building garden areas around hugelkultur mounds or even kratergartens (basically a near complete mound ring) and start plotting out orchard areas by covering those with woodchips.
Other specifics, like your general region and/or the typical weather patterns in your area will help folks give more specific advice but hugels work really well with clay and access to timber. And woodchips can be.made on site or dropped.for free by local arborists and could help prime the orchard areas.
The biggest benefit of soil tests is identifying extreme deficiencies in minerals or out of whack ratios, with heavy clay soil you're likely to be fairly mineral rich, its more a matter of making those minerals available through biology. You might be better served working on building up organic matter broadly and then doing more targeted soil tests on small areas where you know you will be planting a clutch of specific perennials and can use the test results to make a mineral blend designed with them in mind for their plot.
One other thing to consider in the early phases is using a tractor with a chisel plow to rip some trenches into the clay, more or less on contour, to aid air and water penetration deeper. People report pretty good results doing this periodically on heavy clays.
Congratulations on the new place, best of luck, and please keep us updated on your progress!