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.

Around here, All the public gardens, the tiny zoo, and the Municipal building all have "secret" piles of wood chips & etc, composting beautifully, and Free except for the work of digging out the good stuff from underneath.

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.