In North Texas, the best soil amendments are compost, followed by a mixture of landscaping pine bark mulch mixex 3/2 with peat moss, if you can't find the landscaping pine bark mulch (no pieces bigger than a nickel) hardwood mulch will work. don't use thee cypress mulch or the colored mulches, cypress takes years and years to break down, and the colored ones are chemically treated.

I understand completely, as I lived in South West Texas, and the soil is the same, nothing but clay when you dig down more than 6 inches. Living in Northern California now, and the soil is so much better here, and now that the rain has started everything is getting a nice drink!!

I am fortunate to live where the dirt is really good. I do compost and have a worm box, I add the contents of those to the garden every summer.

Get to know your local farmers, chicken sheds, horse racing institutions & in return for shovelling shit you can usually get an awesome amount of raw material to breakdown into very fertile soil.

Yes, good dirt is expensive. But worth it.

When I was growing, yeah, the soil costs mounted pretty fast. Keeping the caterpillars away took a lot of BT spraying. Then the spiders started spreading Botrytis. I couldn't keep up...

You can loosen up your soil by adding one or both of two things: (1) gypsum, also known as diatomacous earth, and/or (2) cottonseed hull mulch.

Finally someone who appreciates the value of dirt. After all dirt is more important than people!

I buy it by the pickup truck load....

It's a never ending battle, but one we have to fight if we're going to have happy plants.