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Need advice on how to improve very sandy soil.

Red October

Active member
Hi everyone, I live in an area where our soil quality is very poor, basically just a few steps up from beach sand quality. I'm not sure how to go about this best as a large part of my personal grow will be outdoors this coming season and it's basically my first time trying to do it properly outdoors.

The area I have available is about 6x16 feet that I need to recondition and I'm going to dig it out next Monday, I was thinking 3 feet deep. I've already started in one section and the soil is the same quality the whole way through, very little organic matter and very hydroscopic when dry. The section that I started in I just added in a whole bunch of potting soil about 50/50 ratio but I noticed that when it mixed with the sand it became alot more water retaining and almost clay like. The small plants I managed to get going at the end of the season where starting to get PM even though I wasn't watering them much and this is something I want to avoid going forward.

I don't need it to be a super soil but I need something I can use without causing me more problems in the long run and it's something I can keep working on to improve over time but the growing season is any a few months away and I know I should get started earlier than later on this.

Many thanks for any help, it's much appreciated.:comfort:
 

Douglas.Curtis

Autistic Diplomat in Training
Your post reminded me of Sam Kennison telling folks to send luggage to Ethiopia instead of food. ;) "What is this?" "It's SAND!" "What's it going to be in 1000 years?" "SAND!" lol :)

Though not sand specific, I would dig individual holes at least 4' deep instead of a wide bed. Fill them in with a quality soil if you can afford it. Do this with only one or two holes this season if money is an issue, and 'amend' the rest with less expensive 'soil conditioners.' The lower quality the soil, the more you're going to have to figure out the nutrition for the season.

Hope that helps. :)
 

troutman

Seed Whore
Planting cover crops to build organic matter will help. Takes time but it will work. :tiphat:

So will adding as much material to be composted. Like leaves, straw, cut grasses, mulches,etc.
 

Cvh

Well-known member
Supermod
Also get a compost bin started. Compost all your kitchen and garden waste and add the finished compost to your soil. Overtime you'll increase your organic matter.
 

Red October

Active member
We do have a dry compost section and a wet compost section but I don't trust it:biglaugh: I've read a few times of inexperienced people using their own compost and not knowing enough about pH and the health of it and having very bad experiences, I'd rather not put that into the ground and try and fix it later. We also have worm bins but half of them have gotten spider mites in them. Not the harmful ones to plants as far as I've read, they are more after decaying matter and compete with the worms for food but I just don't want to use that stuff man. I'm very used to keeping it simple and straightforward but this is something very new to me.
Also get a compost bin started. Compost all your kitchen and garden waste and add the finished compost to your soil. Overtime you'll increase your organic matter.
 

Red October

Active member
Planting cover crops to build organic matter will help. Takes time but it will work. :tiphat:

So will adding as much material to be composted. Like leaves, straw, cut grasses, mulches,etc.

Where doing that with our raised bed for veggies and stuff but it's taken very long and many bags of compost and potting soil to get it to a point where the plants don't wither away during our peak summer days. Our original soil holds almost 0 water and because it's so hydroscopic it's difficult to actually get it wet thoroughly.
 

troutman

Seed Whore
I built a small garden for my sister a few years ago. She has pure sand. So we dug a hole about 2 feet down and filled it initially
with one of those huge round bales of straw they use to feed horses,etc. Then we covered it with some topsoil and manure.
In time the straw composts and you end up with something you can grow in. Adding a myco product filled with bacteria,etc.
helps speed the composting process. I like using Great White for my myco source.
 

Red October

Active member
Your post reminded me of Sam Kennison telling folks to send luggage to Ethiopia instead of food. ;) "What is this?" "It's SAND!" "What's it going to be in 1000 years?" "SAND!" lol :)

Though not sand specific, I would dig individual holes at least 4' deep instead of a wide bed. Fill them in with a quality soil if you can afford it. Do this with only one or two holes this season if money is an issue, and 'amend' the rest with less expensive 'soil conditioners.' The lower quality the soil, the more you're going to have to figure out the nutrition for the season.

Hope that helps. :)
this type of soil is very new to me as most of south Africa has beautiful red clay type soil and all I can think is in this area this was ocean floor or a beach at one point as we have loads of crushed seashells, which I can see under a loupe and we're rather close to the coastline. I mean it's what you get in the dessert type soil, it's dry and just let's water run off without getting absorbed.

Money is ok and I don't mind spending it for the right reasons so I'm probably more willing to put some type of "recipe" together:biglaugh: because I know it's needed but I need to figure out what I need to do.

I know I read once the thread with happy hi in it about the poster for the soil recipe used by the boel but I can't find it again, can't even remember if it was good but it did get me thinking about this.
 

Red October

Active member
I built a small garden for my sister a few years ago. She has pure sand. So we dug a hole about 2 feet down and filled it initially
with one of those huge round bales of straw they use to feed horses,etc. Then we covered it with some topsoil and manure.
In time the straw composts and you end up with something you can grow in. Adding a myco product filled with bacteria,etc.
helps speed the composting process. I like using Great White for my myco source.
that actually doesn't sound half bad, I've seen them use the hay bales to grow veggies but not dug into the ground. I'll do some reading as I have about 3 months to go before I plant so I should be able to get something right before that.
 

Red October

Active member
Just found the thread again, his name was happyhi. There's a nice resolution shot of the poster on the last page but also a really nice thread to read from a nice person.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=127243&page=7

And on the poster topic I see Todd is making Ohaze again, definitely going to make a plan to try and get some. I thought it was quite exciting but haven't seen any threads about it anywhere
 

Boyd Crowder

Teem MiCr0B35
we have an agri dept in every state that tests soil samples we send them.
start there and they will tell you exactly what you are starting with
and recomend some things - sometimes

OR

raised beds and buildasoil coots mix type amendment packs with /peat or coco base/chunky perlite/worm castings and compost

alot of people out west do 400 gallon raised beds and get 16-20 foot trees from em
my buddy out in oregon does real well with his 200gl beds and gets 12 footers every season (musch easier to work/care for for solo farmers)
 

40degsouth

Well-known member
Hi Red October, lots of fantastic advice there.
I have posted quite a bit of information on growing in sand over the last few years. You haven’t mentioned water, is it an issue?? You could dig the area out and lay down black plastic for water retention; 6’x6’ x 2’ deep will grow monsters. I personally wouldn’t dig deeper than this, if you don’t have to because the majority of soil life happens within this horizon.
One to two kilos of water crystals in one of these holes will really help. Some sort of clay additive, like bentonite or just a liquid slurry of local clay, watered in, will help with soil and nutrient retention, clay is a negative particle. Zeolite is also another great additive for nutrient and water retention because it holds both cations and anions and gives them up freely.
Definitely add “activated” charcoal if you don’t add anything else, add this, it’s important and the best way to improve impoverished soils. It’s easy to make yourself by digging a pit in a “V” shape about three feet long and burning off prunings or any type of wood. When you’re finished, put the fire out or it will smoulder for days and burn up your charcoal. You’ve also locked up carbon from the atmosphere for thousands of years, so feel good about the process. Think about this after you’ve sizzled a sausage over the fire.
Activate it with a liquid compost, manure or some sort of tea, leave it in this overnight, or a day or two, or a week or six; if you don’t the charcoal will suck nitrogen and nutrients out of your soil and activate itself. You can even add things like sulphate of potash, liquid seaweed, fish emulsion, etc, etc and it will slow release. Add as much of this as you can afford, or make, you can’t over do it.
Do yourself a favour and check out Microbeman’s work on ACT’s, it’s revolutionary and groundbreaking, IMHO and everyone on Icmag is lucky to have him posting here and available for questions so we can educate ourselves.
You will find the ph will be quite alkaline due to the sea shells and remembering the soil always wants to return to its original ph, so the addition of a handful and a half of sulphur to the square meter and the same for gypsum, to help extract salts from the medium more so than for calcium or sulphur.
A handful of sulphate of potash and a handful of soft rock phosphate to the square meter, to start with, will be a good thing as well.
Blood and bone is really good, unless you’re doing veganics of course but in a new soil, l like about a kilo to 100 litres or so. The blood is a nitrogen source and the bone is for phosphorus. Most organic inputs, that aren’t salts, sulphates, take about four to six weeks to start working, depending on temperature and soil life, so time this for planting. Another great input is seed meals, they’ve got more nitrogen than chicken manure and also contain protein. Add handfuls of lentils to your soil because they will become available before the blood meal and as it spikes, in availability, the blood meal will be starting to work.
Think about where the roots will be by the time one amendment is spent and the next one kicks in, no point adding say seed meals to the whole soil if the roots haven’t reached the point where it is in the soil. The other thing to remember is that additives are never wasted in a good organic soil and it’s the microbes and fungi that create the nutrients that feed our plants. Check out “The Nitrogen Cycle”.
As the soil starts to become more acidic, calcium from the shells will be released as the soil tries to return to alkaline; i.e. the shell grit is a lime source, this is a really good thing but it will put the calcium/magnesium balance out. Half a handful of epsom salt to the square meter will help with this, as well as water retention. Magnesium sticks sand and soil particles together, as well as being needed by the plant for photosynthesis and chlorophyll production, this is why the overuse of magnesium in clay soils is a not very goodley thing and why clay soils contain magnesium and calcium, positively charged particles.
The addition of any sort of organic matter to these base amendments will really help increase soil productivity, composted anything is always the best.
I like to add powdered trace minerals too but it’s much easier to do this with watering. You can even do this with the epsom salts and sulphate of potash too if you think that those ratios are to heavy handed for your location but that’s how l do it.
Hope this helps,
40.
 
Last edited:

Red October

Active member
Thanks Boyd, I did consider doing them in pots for a while too, has its benefits as we have quite strong gale force winds that come through here quite often and I could move them into the storeroom, maybe this is something I should consider again as I can't let my plants get higher than 7 feet really. I'll contact or agri stores and see if we have a similar service with the soil evaluation.
we have an agri dept in every state that tests soil samples we send them.
start there and they will tell you exactly what you are starting with
and recomend some things - sometimes

OR

raised beds and buildasoil coots mix type amendment packs with /peat or coco base/chunky perlite/worm castings and compost

alot of people out west do 400 gallon raised beds and get 16-20 foot trees from em
my buddy out in oregon does real well with his 200gl beds and gets 12 footers every season (musch easier to work/care for for solo farmers)
 

Red October

Active member
Hope this helps,
40.

This helps loads and thanks very much for taking the time to put that together for me. Starting to give me a better understanding of what products we have available here and what I need to get. We currently don't have any water shortages but if push comes to shove we have a borehole too and can use that but our direct underground water can smell quite bad some days especially when it's been hot for a few days in a row and I wasn't sure if it would be harmful by adding in bad Microbes?
 

St. Phatty

Active member
i have the same problem, with decomposed granite soil that also has some clay.

i make layers of "yard waste" - leaves, dried wild peas, etc (biomass), sand/ gravel, biomass, sand/gravel, biomass, etc.

i don't worry about mixing it except by layers.

then give it moisture.

and wait a few years. :friends:
 

Red October

Active member
i have the same problem, with decomposed granite soil that also has some clay.

i make layers of "yard waste" - leaves, dried wild peas, etc (biomass), sand/ gravel, biomass, sand/gravel, biomass, etc.

i don't worry about mixing it except by layers.

then give it moisture.

and wait a few years. :friends:
yeah in hindsight I should have started this process when I moved into the place!
 

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