What to do with yellow clay

November 19, 2006 2:36 PM

What can I do with a large quantity of yellow clay?

I have a number of piles of yellow clay from digging up the earth around my house for a flower garden that's not easy to dispose of. I could separate it out into lots of garbage bags or pay somebody to haul it off. Is there another way I could reuse this stuff? Does it have a particular usefulness?

posted by destro to home & garden (8 comments total)

Mix it with straw and build a cob oven.
posted by hydrophonic at 2:48 PM on November 19, 2006

Make little sculptures?
posted by reklaw at 2:54 PM on November 19, 2006

I used garden clay to plaster the inside of a hole I dug to become a small fish pond. It made a nice smooth stable surface to lay the liner against.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 3:17 PM on November 19, 2006

Find some kids on bikes and give it to them to buid dirt jumps with. You'll be amazed how happy this makes them.
posted by unSane at 3:34 PM on November 19, 2006

Mix it with some sand and compost and make really nice garden soil?

Depending on what you want to grow in the soil you can add a little lime or gypsum to the mix. Lime for grass or veggies, gypsum for azaleas and other acid freaks.
posted by Pollomacho at 7:07 PM on November 19, 2006

make mud bricks?
posted by singingfish at 7:25 PM on November 19, 2006

Lawn art Pac-man.
posted by Katravax at 7:52 PM on November 19, 2006

If you're interested in making an oven, Kiko Denzer's book Build Your Own Earth Oven is worth checking out. Denzer is a sculptor who works with earth -- tiles, walls, ovens, etc.
posted by sculpin at 12:41 AM on November 20, 2006