Here is how I turned ohio glacial clay into a good garden soil.
1-- Drainage --unless you are on an actual clay deposit from a river or lake bed, the common soil horizon structure around here (Ohio soils formed after glacial retreat) has a clay layer that is generally 6"-12" thick with a sandy or loam soil horizon below it. You just have to trench through that clay in a couple of places. Secondarily, dig a trench/ditch around the garden and pile the dirt up to make a raised bed. You have a hill so just just open the dich on the down hill side.
2-- Soil improvement. A lot of semi composted wood chips -- compost with a lot of nitrogen until the are chocolate brown. I did this over one winter. I got my brush chipped in December, had garden planted in May-June. I can get municiple wood chips, which they call compost too.
The lignin in wood turns to long lasting humic compounds. Grass-hay based materials do not have as much lignin in the fibers (more cellulose) and the quality is not as good as tht of hardwoods for long term humic molecules. The nitrogen locks into the chemical structure of the lignin-humics.
Till in equal parts chips to clay, i.e five to inches of chip compost in all.
Fungi will feed on the half composted chips once they are in the soil and help the soil texture even further.
My clay is yellow/red because of the sandstone mixed with it (from iron I guess), but there are veins of pure blue clay in it. Some is too thick to trench through because it was pilled up when the house's basement was dug
Now some four years later, when I till the soil it is still dark brown, darker than the natural medium brown of the native top soil. It still had clay marbles in it, but considering it started out as huge clods of clay I had to shatter by hitting with a shovel once they dried on the surface, I'm very happy with it.
I wish I had a tiller back then!
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