Here’s how to fix sandy soil with permaculture soil amendment principles. Sandy soil has great drainage, but it can be hard to keep the soil moist and healthy, with good organic matter. This article details several simple ways you can balance your soil so that you can start growing food in that sandy soil and start capitalizing on its assets! 
How to Fix Sandy Soil with Permaculture
If you have persistenly sandy native soil you may despair that you’ll never be able to grow a garden without importing all new garden soil. Never fear!
There are several ways you can work with your sandy soil to grow it in a way that will sustain your favorite fruits and veggies.
To Learn More When You Have Time:
Make a New Garden Area – No Dig/No Till
How to Fix Rocky Soil with Permaculture
Natural Solutions to Homestead Problems
First, the Good Things About Sandy Soil
Sand isn’t all bad! Sandy soil’s best attribute is that it has great drainage. There are many plants which require soil that doesn’t stay soggy after a rain.
For example, because I have heavy clay soil as opposed to sandy soil, my lavender and rosemary struggle if I simply plant them right into the ground.
Instead, I have to simulate the sandy soil they’re used to by planting them into raised mounds that have variously sized drainage rocks. These rocks do for my herbs what sandy soil would do naturally – allow water to pass through without lingering at their root zones.
- Some people bemoan them, but sandy and rocky soils do have their upsides!
How Not to Fix Sandy Soils
Before we get started, there’s one thing I need to be sure to explain because it’s super important. Do NOT add clay to sandy soil in an attempt to fix it if you want to grow food in that soil.
Sand and clay make bricks, but not garden soil!
As Utah State University Extension puts it,
Clay is not a good amendment option for sandy soils because by mixing the wrong proportion of clay and sand, you might produce a material similar to low-grade concrete.
Clay soil does have some quality nutrients and does hold onto water. However, if you have a high percentage of sand in your soil, you will want to add other nutritive and water-holding elements instead of clay to avoid hardpan soil that it very difficult to work.
Why We Need to Fix Sandy Soil
The main problem with sandy soil is that it can’t hold onto either water or nutrients. As a result, there is very little soil life – few if any worms, mycelium, or any living thing.
To remedy this issue, we need to introduce more organic matter into the soil to create what amounts to a hotel for water and living organisms.
Any organic matter from leaf mulch to wood chips to compost will help. However, sometimes you need something a little special that will persist for a long time.
If you’d like some extra help improving your soil and you’d like to get started right now, get your free copy of our soil workbook by joining our newsletter family.
How to Fix Sandy Soil to Last Over the Time
Throughout the article, we’ll explain how you can fix sandy soil in several ways. Some options take a few minutes to incorporate into the soil and others take a bit of time.
We’re going to start with the most useful but the most time-consuming to create. The best solution in my opinion is biochar, which is a specially prepared charcoal for garden use.
Remember: Biochar=Specially Prepared Charcoal for Garden Soil
You can purchase a product called “natural charcoal” at feed and home stores that will be helpful. This is plain, wood charcoal without lighter fluid added to it.
- You can leave it as it is, but it’s better to prepare it as actual biochar – instructions to follow.
You can make your own biochar with natural charcoal pretty easily. You will first need to learn how to “charge” it properly to make it more useful in the garden.
Because you might want a great deal of it, purchasing enough natural charcoal to be useful might get cost prohibitive.
- However, the good news is that it only needs to be applied once!
Thought it’s beyond the scope of this article, Joybilee Farm can teach youhow to make your own biochar “charcoal”.
How to Fix Sandy Soil with Biochar
Here’s an excerpt from our article, How to Amend Soil with Permaculture:
Use Biochar to Amend Soil
A super quick explanation of biochar is as follows: charcoal that’s been fermented with water, compost, and maybe a sugar like molasses or sourdough starter to feed beneficial bacteria and yeasts.
Biochar has been used for centuries as a soil amendment. Some of its beneficial properties include:
- It attracts and holds nutrients in the soil.
- It never decomposes and, because of that, provides permanent housing for microbes like beneficial bacteria & fungi, algae, nematodes, etc.
- It stores water.
- It is made of carbon and, therefore, sequesters carbon in the soil.
To easily make your own biochar, please visit the article: How to Amend Soil with Permaculture.
Fix Sandy Soil by Building it Up
If you don’t have time to make a formal batch of biochar, you can also use charred logs from your outdoor fire. You will bury these logs in and around the garden so they can serve the soil.
To begin, pull any charred log pieces from the cold fire and allow them to sit outside in a few rainstorms.
- This saturates (or charges) the logs with water, so that they won’t pull water from your soil when they get buried in the dirt.
- You could also spray them with a homemade compost tea to fill them with nutrients before you put them into your planting hole or the trenches in the yard.
This process is called charging and it fills all the various surfaces of this woody organic material with nutrients and water.
If you bury them without charging them first, you may notice that surrounding plants show signs of stress as the logs “steal” nutrients to fill themselves up. This will fade and balance will be restored over time.
- However, there’s less tress on your plants if you will pre-charge the logs.
Sandy soil can be a challenge and I’ll bet you’ve done a fantastic job persevering with it so far, so don’t loose heart!
- The solution will take some time as you fill the planting areas with carbon-based elements and wait for them to work their magic, but the soil WILL be healed.
More Ways to Fix Sandy Soil
You can also simply bury old wood that you collect in your yard and around your neighborhood in and around garden beds. If you see someone pruning their orchard, or even a few fruit trees, ask to take their pruned wood of their hands.
There are a lot of useful things you can do with sticks on the homestead!
- Thin, willowy branches can be used to make wattle fences and beds.
- Branches make great pea trellises and plant markers.
- Bury cut banches and sticks into every planting hole and in any trench you dig.
- You can use larger logs to build hugelkultur beds for growing vegetables.
As we’ve said before, great gardeners don’t grow beautiful plants, they grow beautiful dirt and the rest takes care of itself!
You have patience and you know how to work hard. You also have on your side the fact that nature loves to grow things and always finds a way to do it.
- Wood chips or bark mulch can also be used in planting holes and trenches. Because they have more surface area exposed, they will decompose quicker than logs or even a branch, but they are lighter and easier to move around.
- Sawdust may also be useful , especially if it comes from a rough-cut sawmill. It does tend to clump and can be a bit acidic, depending on the wood, but in your alkaline soil, that might be a blessing.
Use Native Plants to Fix Sandy Soil
As the soil can support them, you can start planting perennial bushes and small trees. Plants native to your area will almost always thrive much easier than non-native plants.
Each perennial root system that goes into the soil on your lot holds more water and nutrients. Which helps to rehabilitate the dirt in that space.
Between the root systems, the microscopic organisms, and the mycelium in the soil you will be developing a nutrient and moisture highway system. This will grow and expand and support all the plant life you want to give it.
This will increase the abundance of your crops and other yields year after year!
To Help with Plant Ideas:
Native Flowering & Fruiting Bushes
5 Perennial Bulbs for Companion Planting
Trees to Plant & Forage: Best Firewood + Other Uses
–>>Pin This Article For Later<<–
Leave a Reply