JG>Can someone help please, I just moved into a new house in the spring and
JG>the soil is sooo hard and clayey that not many of veggies did good this
JG>year, does anyone know what to mix into the soil to make it workable again
  Any kind of well-rotted organic matter will have an immediate effect.
  But drainage is critical too. Make sure you don't have a plough pan
  (hard compacted layer several inches under the surface caused by
  working the land too wet or with too heavy equipment.) Dig down up to
  18 inches - if you find a distinct layer of different coloured clay
  that takes a lot of effort to break through, this is where to start.
  A handy tool not seen much this side of Europe is a broadfork. It
  looks like a gigantic U, with tines coming in a parabolic arc off the
  bottom of the U. The user stands on the bar, shoving the tines deep
  into the soil, then steps off and pulls the handles down. This
  fractures the hard layer if the tines go deep enough; the tool is more
  efficient and goes deeper than a tiller (my favourite tool), and has
  much more mobility in tight spots than a huge tractor with a
  subsoiler.
  If your garden is very large, or your energy very limited, confine the
  soilpan fracturing to the growing rows themselves and ignore the
  aisles. With the addition of lots of organic matter, plus the
  necessary precaution of not working/walking on wet soil, using the
  broadfork will only be essential for a couple of years.  If you have
  enough time and land to split the garden into this year's and next,
  sowing a cover crop of sweet clover and leaving it for a full year
  will also fracture the plough pan, plus add nutrients to the soil.
  Lee Valley sells a poor copy of the broadfork that will kill your
  back. The true European broadfork, the Grelinette, is/was available
  from Smith & Hawkins.  The latter fork has a parabolic arc to the
  tines that rocks easily in the soil, not requiring sheer brute force
  to lift.
   Hope this makes sense to you, Julie. Have fun. :-)
                      ...Sandra...
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