Solutions For Improving Sandy Soils

Sandy soil is in many ways an even bigger headache than working with clay and rocky ground who’s solutions mostly require a great deal of physical effort to tackle.

But sandy soil is a little more complicated than that, here you have to rebuild an entirely new ecosystem from scratch to make the ground viable again. Or if you’re particularly unlucky, then you have to contend with high salinity in your soil, making it a constant upward battle to get it to hold onto anything of value at all.

We'll leave the high salinity issue for another day, that’s a whole can of worms on its own. First let's have a look at your regular run of the mill sandy soil.

Almost always the cause is simply that there isn’t enough biological matter in the soil for it to hold any moisture. And if there's no water, then there won't be any food or microorganisms, and therefore nothing will grow.

Leaving that patch bare is just asking for erosion to set in. Make no mistake, leaving it to erode away on its own isn’t an out of sight, out of mind kind of affair. Erosion likes to spread. Since water just bleeds through all of that loose sand, it’ll create grooves and furrows when it rains, and those gaping claw marks that it leaves behind will just grow and grow and grow, eventually making it into your living, thriving areas that should never have had to contend with erosion at all.

That’s why we make such a big deal about erosion. It’s not at all the kind of thing that can just be abandoned with the idea that it’ll be contained within the problematic area. Not just like a case of head lice running through a kindergarten playground, it likes to spread far and wide, taking out acres of healthy bush and forest as it swallows the land.

And unfortunately, this isn’t a problem that can be solved overnight. Most people spend years and years fixing the situation. But our solution wont take nearly that long. Two growing seasons is all you’re going to need, if you can catch it quick enough that is. At most, a year, but that’s only if you get winters that freeze over and add snow and glacial runoff to contend with too.

So here we go, where do you need to start?

The Natural Way to Address Sandy Soil

You’re going to have to get some roots in the ground to help hold it in place as you begin to feed and repair the space. But there’s no nutrients in the ground to start planting to begin with.

It's not as simple as just chucking a bunch of manure onto it and sticking a tree or two there. Moisture and rain falls through it like nothing. Without that water, the fertiliser and manure you add to that empty fluff just won’t break down to feed whatever is planted there. And the microorganisms that’ll speed the process up aren't there either.

For smaller acreages, it’s very doable to get some partially degraded manure in there, you can find that at your local horse stables, by digging into your chicken and pig holdings...that sort of thing. It just shouldn’t be fresh.

If it’s been broken down at least a little it will release just enough nutrients to get a seed to sprout and take hold. And manure that’s been doing its thing for a while will bring with it enough bugs and grubs to get things going for you. Seriously, those critters multiply insanely fast when they’re given half the chance.

Besides manure add some grass clippings, wood chips, rotten hay and even kitchen scraps, the more organic material you can get on the ground, the better. Make sure that any hollows, grooves or furrows that were formed from previous runoffs are covered up completely, levelling them out with the surrounding soil. Not covering them properly will just open them up again to spread the moment you turn on the hose.

Having some animals, like chickens, goats and pigs rummage through those piles is going to save you the trouble of spreading it by hand. They won’t just spread it far and wide, those hooves will crush and stomp anything underfoot, speeding up the degrasion process even more. It’s not that you absolutely need animals to get the job done, but they will simplify the process exponentially.

But even without animals to get it all tilled into the ground, as long as it’s been sufficiently spread across the affected area, enough to fully cover the top layer, that should be enough. You don’t need to build mounds that are several feet high.

You just need a thin layer that leaves none of that light, empty sand exposed. In other words, just enough to keep what little water doesn't get sucked into the earth from evaporating into the air.

And now you plant. The trick is to focus on the things that just don’t need all that much water or nutrients to grow, or the weeds and grasses that grow naturally where you live already. It’s not ideal to have something growing that isn’t harvestable or at least edible for your animals. Otherwise all of those acres will just end up costing you money that you can’t afford to give out for no return.

Let’s start with the cheapest, fastest and easiest route to take. But that’s only if you have animals. By throwing down a bunch of native, but edible weeds in fenced off areas, you can feed your herd, and keep the soil replenished with fresh droppings.

Not to mention the water that they’ll naturally be leaving behind from their urine and the mess they make around their drinking troughs.

Hairy Vetch, Nettle, Comfrey, Brambles, Dandelion, chickweed, wild mustard… They all grow fast enough that you can rotate animals every month between 4 separate one acre swatches without any problem.

Brambles and natural grasses have roots that go the deepest. But brambles can be a bit of a headache to get rid of when you finally get to plant there, but there are few edible plants that grow that fast and have roots that go that deep.

The weeds and ground covers we mentioned aren’t nearly all there is to look at, it’ll just depend on where you live and what the climate is.

Take a look at what grows around you, a quick google search and a walk in the field with a can for seeds for a day is all you’ll need to get your hands on more seeds than you’ll know what to do with.

All of those weeds, both edible and non edible, were made to thrive in your backyard. And they were designed to multiply without any of your help. So why not put them to good use and have them feed your livestock, while they all work together to fix the soil for you.

Viable Crops for Sandy Soil

But what about those of us that just don't have the animals, and who can’t sacrifice that space for a year to grow wild without producing anything worth selling?

Let’s start with the vegetables and work our way up to the wheats and grains.

You’ll need to add a good foot of extra organic material if you don't have hooves and claws to till it in and add their own manure to the mix. Two feet of compost, manure and clippings sound like a lot now, but with a little water, that mass is going to break down so fast that it'll shrink down by 70 percent of its size within 3 weeks of being out in the open.

And as much as we hate tilling done with machinery that’ll kill off alot of those biomes, it’ll have to be done for that first round of organic material. After that initial tilling, any other tilling will be done naturally as you pull up your produce when harvesting time comes. Leaving the finer strands of roots behind to keep holding the soil in place.

Root vegetables will do best in depleted soils. They get their food from just that foot of ground at the top that they grow in anyway, so as long as the top layer is healthy, so will they. Beets, carrots, onion, potatoes, peanuts, radishes and turnips are great for this.

Your mammoth radishes grow the deepest, and if you have a hilling kind of potato that requires mounds of straw, hay and clippings, all the better, that’ll add invaluable organic material that breaks down slowly over time, easing the responsibility of constantly feeding the top layer with compost.

Melons are a surprise friend to weak, sandy soils. They were originally cultivated in the Middle Eastern deserts where nutrients lacking soils and dry conditions leave little room for the more common edibles to grow.

Melons just need that first deep composting with planting, after that they want nothing more than to be left alone.  The last few weeks before harvest, they shouldn’t even be watered at all. And whatever is left of the vines at the end of the harvest, just work them in lightly to break down in time for the next season’s crops.

Grass, grain and wheat crops are even easier. Oats, millet, sorghum, amaranth, alfalfa, teff, buckwheat, rye and barley are all renowned for their ability to grow in unforgiving soils and with the least amount of water.

Rye, barley and oats grow the fastest, turning over a profit in under 5 months.

Amaranth, alfalfa and sorghum are the kings of no nonsense crops. Amaranth is a little harder to push on the market, but there’s never a shortage for alfalfa and sorghum. Alfalfa will go the farthest to fix your erosion prone soil though. It can stay in the soil for up to 5 years, delivering a harvest every 3 to 5 months, depending on the variety.

And don’t forget about your trees. Yes you’ll have to dig a sizable hole and fill it with as much organic material to keep that sapling fed until it can get its roots nice and settled for a few months, but there are varieties of fruiting trees that do well in less than ideal conditions.

Figs, mulberries, eucalyptus, olive and the lesser known Barbados cherry. They all require hot and dry conditions to grow in, and unfortunately won’t survive a freezing winter. They are all strictly reserved for those of us who live close to, or South of the equator. Lemon trees, and a handful of other citrus trees can be pushed a little, and we’ve cultivated a fair amount of cold hardy varieties during the centuries.

Even if you’re not planning on having an orchard on your property, a few trees, with roots that go deeper than vegetables and grains do, will be an invaluable addition to that space. Not only will they help keep soil in place, their roots also give a home to any organisms that suffer during the winter months, or if a tractor goes by.

Conclusion

At the end of the day the solution to refeeding and saving sandy soil is life. The more life, movement, roots and bugs you can pile onto it, the better.

Unfortunately you will be using a little more water in the first year or two than you’d like to, but the end result will be that the soil then holds so much moisture that you’ll be using much less at the end of the day.

On a final note, don’t forget to lay down a cover crop at the end of the growing season. Even if the frost ends up killing it off eventually you’ll still have roots beneath the surface and all of that rotting foliage topside to add as much good stuff back into the ground when the weather warms up again. A little biochar will also go a long way to help the ground keep more water and nutrients in.

And finally don’t hate the rocks. Sure boulders will have to be taken care of, but smaller pebbles and even fist sized stones do just as much to keep the soil in place as everything else does.

If it’s not in the space where root vegetables need to spread out in, everything else will just grow around them. Adding to that puzzle effect that holds the whole shebang steady and in place.