Sandy Soil

All the gardening I have done before was on clay soil. I have recently moved house and now have very sandy soil, it just crumbles at the touch and cannot be formed into a ball or sausage. When very wet its like being on a sandy beach as the tide goes out leaving that sloppy top layer.

My question is;
What plants and vegetables would do best in this type of soil?

Stuart.

 

Hi Wemfish.

I can't say for sure as I am on heavy clay. It sounds as if its very well drained and that makes me think of mediterranean type plants. You probably need plants that will tolerate some drought as I assume that the water will pass through quite quickly.

Ideally, you needs loads of organic matter in there.

 

Hi Wemfish,

Sea Holly, Sea Beet, Sea Kale, most other things that begin with Sea, except Sea Horses.

Carrots, Parsnips, Salsify, indeed any root veg. Cabbage should be ok. Like Peter said, anything to hold the water. Our water table on our old sandy allotment used to drop 12 foot in the summer. There was a pump with a handle, when you pumped there were little plops as drowned mouses got pumped through.

 

Another thought I just had was to use Comfrey as a green manure crop. Its really deep rooted & will drag nutrients back up from down below where they have been washed to.

You then compost it and add that to the top soil.

You got a Roman Quarry Armandii ? Nice one.

 

So it looks like a trip to some stables to get some manure.
I will have a look on Freegle to get some for free.

 

Let us know how you get on Wemfish

Anything organic that you can dig in will help with moisture retention, also a mulch will stop the ground loosing water in the summers heat. Grass clippings, bark mulch, shredded stuff etc.

Armandii, have you got a metal detector ?

 

I've recently discovered that riding schools sometimes not only give it away for free, but are grateful if you take it because it saves them the hassle of finding somewhere to put it. I got some a few months back, and the owner was ecstatic because I'd cleaned four or five stables out for her for free and dealt with what I extracted. She told me to come back as often as I liked, and even offered to get one of her lads to take the quad with a trailor to get some well rotted stuff that had been dumped in the bottom field. I declined her kind offer at the time because the ground was so sloppy (being winter) that I was worried that even the quad would struggle, but she told me the offer is there for next time.

Maybe if you phone round (or visit) some local stables in your area you might be as lucky as I was.

 

Near where I live, there is an expanse of sand dunes 4 miles long by about half a mile wide. I remember when I was a kid, the dunes were just sand, with patches of that coarse razor sharp grass you get on dunes.

Nowadays, about 30 years on, much of it is the nicest grassland I've ever seen. It is chock full of wildflowers, and even a few shrubs and small trees. It is all wild. In the summer is it is a hive of activity with all manner of insects, including the widest range of butterflies I've ever seen in one area.

All of this has developed naturally on sand. I guess that pioneer species (the nasty razor sharp grass for example) colonised it first, and as bits died off they added organic matter, and so stabilised it a bit, and so on until it became the diverse and beautiful area it is now.

It is so nice in fact that I've toyed with the idea of filling my garden with a layer of sand and trying to recreate it. 30 years ago, if a gardener had looked at the dunes, they would have concluded that the hostile conditions of being right on the sea front, with the frequent gales, the salty spray, the total lack of water retention, the lack of nutrients etc would all have meant that it would never be anything other than the drifted extension of the beach. Now I'd challenge anyone anyone to go there and not be impressed.

I guess what I'm saying is if you can't adapt the soil to what you want, maybe look at what suits the soil. I'm sure the garden isn't entirely drifting and like the dunes were 30 years ago, so I guess it is ready for a good range of plants that don't mind sandy soil.

 

Thanks for all the help.
I put a trailer full of manure on the beds and a few bags of compost, That will have to do for now and I will get a load more at the end of the year.
I will compost and dig in all the non edible plant bits as well and see what happens. . .
I found a few daffodils as I dug over the ground and moved them to the other side of the garden - I don't want to risk confusing the bulbs with onions and killing myself/family!