How do you improve sandy soils?
How do you improve any soil?
Sandy soils are devoid of most nutrients. Getting your soil right makes plants more robust and less prone to disease and insect attack, helps them develop better roots and helps the soil retain moisture for longer.
So to Improve Sandy Soils (any soils) my mantra is ORGANIC MATTER, ORGANIC MATTER, ORGANIC MATTER.
Bring in compost (bag or trailer load). I love and use Searles Garden Products, Soil Activator and Searles Composted Five in One.
Make your own compost. It’s as easy as getting a few old bins drilling a lot holes in them, sinking them halfway into the ground and adding all kitchen scraps, cardboard, newspaper, leaf matter then let the worms do their thing). If that’s too hard buy an Urban Composter Bokashi Bin. It does it all for you
Compost, Compost and Compost. Then I would throw some Organic Link around. Water and then mulch the top with an organic mulch like sugar cane. Water again. Then let nature do its thing. Then REPEAT
Why compost?
Two reasons
Compost helps improves the soils organic carbon. This is the basis of soil fertility. It releases nutrients for plant growth, promotes the structure, biological and physical health of soil, and is a buffer against harmful substances. Basically the more soil carbon you have the healthier your soil and therefore your plants and the soil will hold more water (less watering for you).
Organic matter, compost, increases CEC. Sandy soils rely heavily on the high CEC of organic matter for the retention of nutrients in the topsoil.
CEC, Cation exchange capacity, is a measure of the soil’s ability to hold positively charged ions. It’s very important to the soil as it influences - soil structure stability, nutrient availability, soil pH and the soil’s ability to hold and release fertiliser.
Why Organic Link?
Organic Link contains Natural Rock Dust Minerals & Zeolite. These are usually lacking in sandy soils. Organic Link contains lots of other good things too, I’m just going to talk about these two today!
Zeolite helps the CE to occur. Basically zeolite can hold and exchange nutrients required by plants, making nutrients readily available. Rock Dust is a finely ground volcanic basalt containing a huge number of slow release micro-nutrients. This improves the wettability of sandy soils and CEC of sandy soils. It also enables plants to easily pick up the nutrients they need.
So as you can see composting, organic linking and mulching is important to any garden, not just sandy soils.