Yeah, definitely difficult to dig in the wet. The clay cakes onto everything.shibui wrote: ↑July 9th, 2023, 10:30 pm In my experience digging heavy clay when it is wet is very difficult. The clay soil sticks to the shovel, your boots, everything. Then it is real hard to get the clay soil off the roots without breaking roots. Need to soak in water or use lots of water through the hose to wash it away. Clay grows good trees but difficult to work. Definitely add compost, gypsum or sand to clay soils to help open the structure a bit.
If the soil is easy to work when wet then it is not clay.
I have found that digging faster growing trees each winter is a great idea. As you say, treat each as a repot to cut and reposition roots to improve nebari.
I leave slower growing species for 2 years, sometimes longer. Pines and junipers are slower and the roots do not thicken and get hard so They can be left for 4-5 years at a time to thicken and are still easy to dig.
That's where the colander & sand come into play. I'm going to cut /remove any roots in the clayanyway, so I can use the sand layer or, if that proves too difficult to run a saw through, I'll cut off at the outer holes of the colander.
At least that's the plan, we'll see how well it goes.