how can i improve my clay soil?

i have very bad clay soil. it goes hard as a rock and its hard for water to get to the roots and it restricts growth on my plants.
I went to the nursery and they gave me some mixture of gypsum/soil conditioner etc to mix through the soil which i have done a couple of weeks ago and there isnt much imrovement, i am told i would have to repeat this every 6 months, this is really back breaking work. would it be worth getting rid of all the old soil and putting some new one in?

Go ahead. Make things simple for yourself.

I live in Arizona and we have clay and rocks for the most part and had the same problem....

I had to dig down about 18 inches remove all the dirt and replace it with a 4 to 1 mixture of soil and original dirt it works great in my flower beds......now if I could keep the @#^$ rabbits away....

LOL it's always like that isn't it? fix one problem and another one is around the corner. I hope you find a solution to the bunny problem!

we have clay also..............each spring we turn up all of the garden clay soil and put topsoil on top.

It takes time to get good soil and yeah, it's a lot of work to make it happen, but the results are well worth it.

Do you have a compost bin? If not, you need to get one started, the more organic material you add to the soil the easier it will be to improve it.

You can remove part of your clay type soil and add a layer of compost and some top soil to get you started this year. However, for next year, if you start building your own compost now, you can add as you go along. It will help encourage worms to come and they will help aerate your soil, break apart your clay and eventually you will have rich black humus.

I am thinking of starting to compost this year.

Try using raised flower beds. You can use landscape blocks to build up the bed and then you wouldn't even have to worry about the clay.

Hi there, I'm in Australia too and believe me when I say you share your problem with most gardeners in the country. We have little topsoil and alot of that has turned to dust and blown away due to the longstanding drought. An additional problem is when developers subdivide a new area and scrape off the topsoil to level it out for the construction of roads and buildings; this leaves the new householder with nothing but clay to work with so they go and purchase a truckload of good soil from yet another newly subdivided area, and so the cycle continues. It's a rip-off and a crime and is only adding to this country's soil erosion and salinity problems, to name a few.
Anyway, I started my garden about 18 months ago and, like you had nothing but clay to work with. I'd learned quite a bit about 'No Dig' gardening and Permaculture, so set to work using these principles and guidelines. First I had a male friend dig some large holes for the big trees; I filled the holes with mushroom compost which is an excellent medium, being PH neutral, so these trees were to form the 'canopy'. Next I proceeded to 'build' beds around the trees using anything and everything I could get my hands on - layered newspapers, cardboard, mulch, compost, manures, lawn cuttings, garden refuse, weeds, leaves and twigs etc. Then I covered everything with a thick layer of sugar cane mulch; pea straw and lucerne are work well too.
I planted directly into these 'raised beds' and now have flourishing gardens all around my home, and all this in the midst of the worst drought in our country's history.
The gypsum and soil conditioner will work, eventually, but only after much back-breaking work on your part. Trust me when I say 'No Dig' is the way to go. You may need to order in a trailer-load or two of soil to get your raised beds going, but once that mix of material rots down you'll have the richest, crumbly, workable loam you could possibly ask for. And you will have made it yourself.
Hope that helps a bit; maybe we'll catch up and talk again soon.
Bye now

It's good to use lots of organic matter to break it up. Stuff like composted horse manure, general compost, loamy soil mixed with compost etc. Great way to break up the clay. Also, mulches like tea tree, comfrey and sugar cane will also do well to once aged and composted into the soil.