What Is Sandy Soil?

In the event you live inside a sandy area, you know that it may be hard to grow grass in sandy soil. Water runs out of sandy soil rapidly and it can be hard for sandy soil to retain the nutrients that grass need to thrive. Sandy soil amendments can help improve sandy soil so that you can grow a wider assortment of grass inside your lawn. Let’s look at what is sandy soil and how you can go about amending sandy soil.

What is Sandy Soil?

Sandy soil is easy to spot by its feel. It features a gritty texture and when a handful of sandy soil is squeezed inside your hand, it will easily fall apart if you open your hand again. Sandy soil is filled with, well, sand. Sand is primarily small pieces of eroded rocks.

Sand tends to possess large particles and the particles are strong and have no pockets exactly where water and nutrients can hold to it. Since of this, water and nutrients have a tendency to run out, and because sandy soil lacks both water and nutrients, many plants have a challenging time surviving in this sort of soil.

How to Improve Sandy Soil

The best sandy soil amendments are ones that enhance the capacity on the sandy soil to retain water and boost the nutrients in the soil as well. Amending sandy soil with well rotted manure or compost (like grass clippings, humus and leaf mold) will help to enhance the soil the fastest. You can also add vermiculite or peat as sandy soil amendments, but these amendments will only add towards the soil’s capacity to hold onto water and can not add considerably nutrient value to the sandy soil.

When amending sandy soil, you need to watch the salt levels from the soil. While compost and manure are the best approach to amend sandy soil, they contain high levels of salt that can stay within the soil and damage growing plants in the event the salt level builds up too high. If your sandy soil is currently high in salt, including in a seaside garden, be certain to use plant only based compost or sphagnum peat, as these amendments possess the lowest salt levels.