Organic material (mulch and/or compost – ideally, your compost would contain some clay).Here are the 5 things necessary to improve sandy soil permanently (and by permanently, we mean “long term” as long as these 5 things conditions are met at all times, adding them as they disappear/change.) Plants use water to uptake minerals and to perform all of their processes (photosynthesis, respiration, growth, movement, chemical signaling, etc.) To make your sandy soil viable – you need to make it hold on to water. After a big rain storm, you would never guess it rained at all! You would never guess rain had fallen – EVER! It is dry and dusty, at all times. Our topographical maps show sand to at least 70 feet. Can it be won? Read on…I promise we will give you some ideas toward the end.īut first – what are we working with? Our soil is zimmerman fine sand – approximately 80% sand, 19% silt, 1% clay. Getting anything to stay alive is an uphill battle. Roots can go down as far as they’d like – but most plants can’t take the heat or the drought. Sand has none of the problems of clay soil – but also few of the benefits. (To see the beginning of our farm story – click here.) Planting trees was so easy! Keeping them alive was a different story! And so began our battle with sandy soil. So when we found land we could afford and saw that the soil was sandy – we foolishly rejoiced. Over many years, I could get potatoes and carrots of normal size and shape but I still had to dig around them, no pulling, to get them loose. The first few years, we had stubby little forked carrots. In times of drought, it would crack and become hard as a rock.Įach year I added compost and grew root crops to try and improve the soil texture. You couldn’t walk around without “growing” a few inches thanks to the muck on your shoes. During rain storms, the clay would stick to everything – our hands, our tools, our feet. For almost 2 decades, we grew all of our plants in clay soil.
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