Sandy and clay soil

thy · Post by **thy** » Mar 28, 2006 3:46 pm

Think I have moved from one clay garden to an other. All the times I have heard people with sandy soil complain and telling me: even if it was hard to dig and weed,everything would grow way better than in their sandy soil
Sandy soil is poor and you have to water it every day or so. in 30 years I have never heard one good word about it.
Last year my son got himself a garden. For him garden is a place for ball plays and a fire, but he love too look at flowers and plants... he got me a new playground. But it is very sandy and without a bed at all

Here are my experience
If you want to do a new bed in claysoil: take a sharp good spade, cut down a square- jumping on the spade, cut it in two and use all your force to lift what feels like an elephant
In sandy soil, stick your old spade down the grass, rock a bit and lift a huge sample of grass... continue

Armend the soil
In clay soil
Use your salary for the last week on sharp grit, dig it in, turn it around a bit, but do not let upside go down due to the micro clima, add good compost and wood pieces, do the same once again... pick up some rainworms and bring them to the bed.. give it a organic topdressing

In sandy soil...add a lot of good compost, stir it a bit and plant

Okay he have high water level, but every plant were new.
6 weeks of beautiful sun after a dusty but rather dry midsummer:
Claysoil.. the plant suffer when they are only given 1 " two times a week
Sandy soil.. got water once and were more beautiful.. and the roots of the hostas were huge

2.day of spring
We have had 2 days with 9 to 10 C.. úp 50 F somewhere

Claysoil is frosen 2" down

Sandy soil is open and close to ready and you could see the very tiny sprouts of the new weeds

Some of the starters I planted last spring are bigger than my plants

I give up

I wanna complain

Is this just the luck of the beginner or have someones cheated on me all the time

Pia

Wanda · Post by **Wanda** » Mar 29, 2006 10:23 am

Oh, Pia dear, don’t give up! Make raised beds however you can (rocks, timbers, log sections, bricks, concrete blocks). Put a few inches of gravel in the bottom of the raised beds for drainage then fill it up with good sandy loam. A bit of work and expense, but you can do one or two beds as you are able. It has got to be easier than trying to “fix” clay soil! All my gardens are in raised beds, even though we have fantastic sandy loam here. I like the nice finished look and the plants like raised beds...plus I don’t have to bend down so far (hehe). And when the lawn/weeds need trimming, the rocks and timbers I use for edging keeps the weedwhacker from hitting the garden plants.

And hey, in the meantime, you always have your son’s sandy garden to play in (hehe)!

wanda...thanking God for her sandy soil!

Ginger · Post by **Ginger** » Mar 29, 2006 2:19 pm

(((Pia)))) don't give up! Wanda is right, raised beds can be much easier in the long run! I have nothing but sandy soil, and I have to amend all the time. I do have to tell you I laughed hard at your comment about a shovel of clay soil feeling like lifting an elephant

Since we have both red clay and sand here in OK I can feel your pain!

Ginger

impatience · Post by **impatience** » Mar 29, 2006 11:38 pm

I was empathizing myself, Ginger.

Pia, we have the same problems here-this clay soil is a back-breaker. I did a couple of raised beds and it was amazing that the hosta grew more in one season than the ones in the ground did in four years!

Primroselane · Post by **Primroselane** » Mar 29, 2006 11:56 pm

To Pia
I love your sense of humor, your plants will love it too.

thy · Post by **thy** » Mar 30, 2006 7:04 pm

and thank's

I have been thinking of raised beds , but my beds are all narrow and I will use a fortune to raise them.. do not know if Í will be living here for long, and if I move there will probably be a parking lot on the area

so, no lifting the sales price duing that.

I do raise the new beds all the times, but in a few ears they are back to normal level. I am so sure there is someone on the other side of the Globe with a straw soaking sll the good stuff I add

Every year it get a layer of sharp grit, compost, alfalfa and a good natural fertilizer... and nest year it is gone

Maybe I just need to give up on this place, bit hard it is 6 minutes walk away from centrum of the city
Yes I do belive my plants want to perform great for me

Wanda, when I grow old, I want to tell my kids how to raise my garden... and then I will grow hostas with red legs .. sitting in my wheelchair enjoying the red

whis4ey · Post by **whis4ey** » Mar 31, 2006 4:24 am

it is 6 minutes walk away from centrum of the city

Just remember, Pia. As you get older that will become 20 minutes

Maybe you should move while you still have time?

Linda P · Post by **Linda P** » Mar 31, 2006 8:41 am

Pia, I loved your comparison of the two types of soils. I have wonderful soil here, and I'm so thankful for it. I've gardened in all types of soils, and this is the place I will stay until my gardening days are past.
Linda P

Wanda · Post by **Wanda** » Mar 31, 2006 9:36 am

Pia: It doesn’t always cost a fortune to make raised beds. I haven’t spent a penny on mine, except for the composted manure to fill them. I have been collecting rocks for years, the farmers used to be happy to have you get them out of the way. Now they sell them, so I found a guy with a small quarry and I trade him hosta for rocks. The railroad ties I used along the driveway in the new garden I got for free when the railroad replaced all the old ones with new. When building that garden I didn’t have enough rocks nor railroad ties to make all the raised beds, so I got free hardwood cants from a local lumber mill. Cants are what is left after they cut all the good lumber off a log...its the 3” square center, in various lengths. And when I start on the garden going down to the creek, I will likely use lengths of big logs vertically to edge the terraces...

You just have to look around and think creatively. Living in a town, watch for buildings being torn down...you might be able to get free bricks, concrete blocks or wooden beams. If they are tearing out an old street, maybe you could get free cobblestones.

Or, since you seem to have an abundance of clay, use it!!! You can make adobe bricks!!! Dig up some clay, mix with water till you get a thick cake batter consistency, mix in some chopped straw or weeds and form into bricks. Let dry in the sun then build your raised beds from them.

Or for a quick easy fix, use the ancient wattle and daub method they used to build houses from. Cut a lot of young trees with trunks about as big as your thumb at the base. Cut off the thick ends about a foot taller than you want your bed to be. Stick/pound these into the ground about every foot or so. Take what is left and weave them back and forth between these “stakes” in the ground, staggering the joints. Just like making a big bottomless basket. When you have them as tall as you want your bed, mix up some of your clay to a thick cake batter consistency and plaster the inside and out of your “walls”. Let dry in the sun, then fill it up with good soil. You could even skip the covering with clay part, but they won’t be as strong. And you do have lots of clay (hehe).

wanda

thy · Post by **thy** » Apr 01, 2006 6:10 am

Wanda what a lot of things to think about.
I have been looking for some of them in the last years, but with no real luck.
Our woods are way to tidy for finding woodpieces more than 2" across, People bye access to sample them for their fireplaces, but they are lovely as edgers. Wished them since I first saw them in Sams garden
I can't handle the stones and yes they are started to sell them here too

I had a good laugh at your surgestion to dig up the darn clay and make brigs of it, should have thought of it 9 years ago

Do you think the wattle and daub methode will work ( thanks for explaining what it is

) I thought it would rotten with in a summer. But then the day before I were looking in a garden book and saw that methode used for a edge on a pond, filled with soil from the one side and no cla/ concrete used at all... when i saw it, I thought it was just made for the day .. to give a beautiful picture

I can even bye some low fences, but think they are too tall anyway.. could I cover/ strenghten them with the tufa concrete ? the look of it is rather natural and for me very nice ??

All my beds are very curved
Will look when I see a area where they are breaking down houses, newer thought of that

Sam I can see a pharmacy from the window

and have a food shop next door and one across the pharmacy and next to it is a shop with glasses, If I move away, do you come here supply me

Pia

The cobblestones are out of possibillity. I can bye a new one 4*4" from Poland for less then one $, but for an old one I have to give 5 to 7 $. The really, really bad thing is.. when I look out my window I can see thousands of them.. on the walkway and the squarre

I have been so tempted when they dug them up for different reasons

Linda P · Post by **Linda P** » Apr 01, 2006 9:58 am

I was thinking as I read your post, Wanda, about the way woods are managed in Europe, as opposed to the way we do things here. Anywhere I went in Europe, there were no dead logs lying about, and the forest floors are clean as a whistle. The other thing is that it seems there is much less of an attitude of tearing down the old to make way for the new.
Pia, do they have 'junking' in your area? I was so excited to see that tradition in Germany. My friend's daughter lived there for years, and on the regular 'junken' weekends, she drove around with her jeep and picked up all kinds of cool stuff. Maybe that's a possibility for finding old wood, etc?
The house where I stayed in Germany was right next door to a very, very old barn with wattle walls. It looked as though they just mixed up a batch of mud and patched it whenever necessary, so I think that it must last fairly well.
I don't have access to rocks here, but haul them home from my brother's house. I wish I had a big truck and the money to afford gas to go get a huge load! I did find some old limestone foundation rocks when a friend of DH's tore down an old barn. I also have a pile of concrete blocks that I will use for something, and some cut-up telephone poles that will make a raised bed one day too. I'm a dyed in the wool scrounger myself!

Linda P