Re: New Beds in zone 8 -sand
- To: perennials@mallorn.com
- Subject: Re: New Beds in zone 8 -sand
- From: M* <M*@aol.com>
- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 00:55:08 EST
there three typs of soils that are no good for grwoing things in pure sand
pure clay and pure organics.
a good soil has some of all these-though the organics are not needed by the
plants.
clay and sand are partical sizes clay is very small and tends to be plastic
when wet. sand is large and tends not to hold water and has a lot of poor
space.
if i had to choose betwwen a all clay or a all sand soil i would choose the
sand.
I do not have the time now to ammend soil- I just replace it to a depth of
6-10 inches with a mixture of 50% black top soil and 50 % decayed "peat" bog .
the soil is very nutrinal poor but easy to work with and "soft" and sand or
perlite as time goes by. this soil works well for me since i do not like to
use the shovel more than i have to--I can dig the plants out of the ground
with my hands when it is time to move them.
the natral soil here iclassified as a clay muck-- a clay soil with lost of
organics in it---when dry in bakes and when wet it is like pea soup. What I
did before was to add 30 percent sand and 20 percent peat moss and then every
year add 1 or 2 inches of oak compost. the plants grew weel but it was to
hard to get them out of the ground.
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