How to plant in sandy or very well draining soils. Proper tools, amendments, and techniques

Welcome to the Hort tube where we talk all things gardening. My name is Jim Putnam and today we're going to talk about

plant

ing in

sandy

soils

or extremely

well

-drained

soils

. Today we're going to talk about how to

plant

in

sandy

soils or in soils that drain

very

very

well

or any type of soil that you think will dry out frequently between rains and how we could modify those soils to improve them and maintain some moisture between rains and that way we have I need to water less, so let's talk about the

tools

we're going to need.

This is a garden rake. It's a difficult rake to tie down. I buy all my

tools

with fiberglass handles. This one has been with me for about 20 years since I started my gardening company. Landscaping is very worn it is bent at the top but still works great. I encourage you to buy them. They are a little more expensive, but we don't need many tools to plant woody shrubs, so the two or three I'll show you are the ones you need. ohm are fiberglass handled tools and will be with you for a long time, so the reason we will use a garden rake is if you are planting in an existing space that already has pine straw or hardwood mulch , this is great for removing that we want to make a big space for our planting we don't want to end up with that pine straw or hardwood mulch in our hole that we are planting our new shrub in the next tool we are in What I'm going to need It's a peak.

I encourage you to get a good one with a fiberglass handle just like the garden rake and the same as the shovel. I'll show you I've worn this one for over 20 years and it was probably an inch longer. I have sharpened it many times over the years, we use the end of the ax to cut roots and even if you are in sandier or loam soil that is easy to dig in, you still need this tool because you are going to run into roots that you're going to need to cut and for that we'll use the ax end of this tool if it gets into a pocket where the dirt is a little harder and hasn't been dug or maybe it's after new construction and the crew has been there and really compressed the floor.

It can be difficult to dig around houses after new construction due to the heavy equipment used. This is the final photo and I'll show you that it will snap shut. This on the ground, you know, just use the weight of the tool and just pull it back a little bit and that will break it and then we'll use our shovel to get it out. Okay, so what kind of shovel to buy? Again, these are five shovels with two different fiberglass handles. This is just your regular digging shovel. It measures perhaps ten inches wide and ten or 12 inches deep.

This is a trench shovel. It measures approximately five inches wide and approximately 12 inches long. I have worn it out. over the years, but if I have harder soils or if I'm just not a very physically strong person and you know you're a weekend warrior doing this, I would buy a trencher shovel, these things are super easy to slide down in the ground after you've used a pickaxe to break it up a little bit, while it can be very discouraging, the sun, you know, just if you fill the shovel just once, there could be 20 pounds of material to get out of the hole.

It's a little silly, if you're digging five or six holes you don't need to be in that hurry anyway, so I wouldn't buy the shovel if I go to the store and I'm buying three tools I'm going to buy the garden rake I'm going to buy a good pickaxe and I'm going to buy a ditching shovel first before I buy this type of digging shovel, okay, so let's talk about soil

amendments

that we could use when planting in Sandia or well. -drained soils First of all, I want to rule out using anything that says potting mix or potting soil.

These are materials that you would use when container planting your summer flowering annuals or vegetable plants and containers or perhaps your house plants, but they are not going to be very good for any woody shrubs, whether in the ground or in a container, it just stays too wet, right? It just doesn't work well for woody shrubs that bury plants, fruit plants, it's just too much water for them, we'll roll it up. immediately take out the other thing for sandy soils that we're going to implement has any type of really very thick material this is a pine bark soil conditioner here is a very, very thick aged pine bark that, you know, falls off hand here, that is.

In fact, it will increase the drainage of your sandy soils and probably won't be a good idea to use in that application. The three things that would be good to use would be compost, which here is a composted product that is a little bit coarser. It might be one I would like to use more in a clay based soil. You can feel along the bag and see how thick it is before you buy it. If you have very sandy or very well-drained soils, you might want to avoid one that says it is coarse and use it more on clay soils.

The other problem we can find with compost is that we don't know its pH and it's not a big deal for what we are doing. put three shovelfuls or something like that in a hole to plant a shrub, but if you're using compost in an ongoing situation, like if you're amending your garden every year, you'll want to check the pH because we don't really know what the pH of this is, We don't know which one it was. It was composted to make the product, so it could be very alkaline or very acidic, so check to see if it's something you'll be doing every year. a space to improve it for your annuals or your vegetables or your perennials the next thing we might consider using and this would be a very good product to use and sandy soils are very well drained soils as peat peat has an amazing ability to Retaining water in place to absorb the water around it and keep it in place.

The only problem with peat is that it is not really a renewable resource. It has taken thousands of years to develop. This is a grass that tangled in on itself and died every fall. for years and years and years and years and thousands of years and as we mine this in the future we will run out of it at some point, it's just that it's not a renewable resource so you might know to lean towards the compost. or cow dung. I'll show you in a minute. If you're worried about using something, you know we're digging it out of the ground and at some point we'll run out.

Cow dung is the other element. we could use cow dung it has amazing ability good product good cow dung has amazing ability it's composted I'm handling it it's not really gross it doesn't have a smell or anything it has an amazing ability to keep moisture in place and it's absolutely It's great to add when you're planting in sandy soils just to stop water from seeping out of the soil so quickly after rains, so now that we've chosen the tools we're going to need and the

amendments

we're going to use. To plant in our well drained sandy soil after planting we will need mulch and mulch to prevent weeds from growing and competing with our plants and also mulch to regulate soil moisture if you have pine straw available in your area this is a bale of pine straw works absolutely fantastic does a great job of not keeping things too wet and does a great job of preventing weeds is a little dangerous if you live in an area that is prone to fires in the fall and winter in some places in It's actually been banned and in some cities they no longer allow it in some buildings, but the other thing you can use is hardwood mulch.

This is a bag of brown stained hardwood mulch. You'll see more and more of that. It is mulch dyed brown, black and red. They say the dye is organic. I suppose it's okay to place it repeatedly in your garden, but I tend to just use double or triple shredded hardwood. mulch which you can buy in bulk or also in the back yard just make sure you use a pretty thin layer and I'll show you after planting we don't want to use too much of this stuff because it will suffocate your plants it just won't allow them to breathe and it will hold too much water instead if you drown them in it.

The other thing you can use is that you will see rock used as mulch and gravel and as a decorative element. rocks is a short term thing in areas where it rains a lot the leaves blow and it gets dirty over time we start growing on it and it's not the long term solution you think it is and it actually ends up requiring quite a bit of maintenance over time but I understand which some people like, but I prefer to use hardwood mulch or pine straw. One last thing you may see when purchasing soil amendments is that many of them now have fertilizers in them. and that's okay with potting soil because potting soil will generally be used for planting annuals and containers or vegetables and containers or in the ground or that thing and that's okay, even houseplants can be fertilized when you transplant them, but it is not ideal for planting soils where we are planting shrubs and trees in the ground because, like in the example of my area, it is better to plant shrubs in the fall and if I plant shrubs in the fall I definitely do not want to fertilize them at the same time, because I can generate some growth on plants that end up getting badly burned in the winter, so with these basic components that I showed you and then I fertilize in the spring or the summer or any time appropriate for the plant. that you are growing this is an area that we use in the nursery to take cuttings from plants that we have planted in the ground.

I have a whole ridge of camellias here above us that are in bloom right now, it's November and I'm going to put this variegated pittosporum in the ground right here. I know this soil is very sandy. There's an agricultural field above that for years has come into this area and there's a pond behind here where the sand is always trying to get to. so I know that this area that I am standing in can get very dry even in times when it rains regularly, if it is not a good torrential rain, this area will definitely dry out, the first thing I will do here.

It's using this garden rake like we talked about and I'm just going to remove these leaves. There's no longer a bed here. This is just a few low weeds that I will have to get rid of and then some leafy vegetation and pine straw. that's falling from the trees around you this fall. I'm going to clean all that up with this rake and I can push or pull with this thing, which is nice, but I'm going to give myself a lot of room. I do not do it. of that organic material falling into this hole that I'll be digging, okay, that's good, I'll show you real quick with this pickaxe.

It's unlikely that in this space I'll end up with roots where I would use the Pick this and I can already tell you that this is so smooth here that I don't even need to use the pickaxe. I mean, just by dropping it, it goes all the way. I want to be able to use the shovel without problems, but here it is. Another use that we can use with this selection is that I can drag it along the top of the soil a little bit and I can take these roots of these weeds and cut them just below the surface, just like it should. do them pretty easily and clear this whole space of weeds like that, obviously in clay it would be a little bit more effort than that, but in this type of sandy loam soil, they actually immediately come up very easily and that should be enough.

I'm going to pull that out again like this, so I should kill it and I got most of those weeds before they went to seed. I don't expect many of these to come back, of course, there are more seeds out there that will. They will germinate eventually, but the ones I have there are pretty much dead, so our next step here is to just dig this hole, like I say, I'm not going to have any problems in this sandy loam soil and, you know, sometimes

draining

soils. really very well it won't look like that. I have an area behind me that we actually drive through and I guarantee you that if I try to dig in that space where we've been compacting it for years, I'm almost certainly going to have to use the hole to get down and even in this type of soil so you know after your house has been built and if it is new construction and you have been running equipment on it, it may be more like that road bed and you may end up having to use it to pick up a bit to use the end of the pick and break up the dirt, but this is a pretty easy space here to dig.

I have the biggest problem with dirt falling back into the hole. I'll pound some clay into this.

proper

ty, this

proper

ty has clay under this silt that was washed out of this field and in fact I can already see a little bit of it, there is no sand that is not deep here, so there is a layer under here, it is almost certainly this water would fall through the sand quite easily and hit that clay. layer and then just run along that layer and get off the slope and it's below ground property and it's not as soggy, this is probably almost done here.

I'll try it on a bush and see, I'll leave it in When I test the container, adjust them and see if I have it as deep as I want and as wide as I want, okay, let's try it. I'll put it there and I really think I've gone a little deeper even in soilssandy like this. I don't want to plant this three inches deep and, you know, below the original level and then pile up soil or cover it with mulch. I still want to ride it a bit. so I've definitely gone too deep here and we'll rectify that when we mix organic material with this soil, okay, so I want to amend this sand.

I have it wrapped around 2/3 of the hole here. I'm not going to use peat down here. I really prefer to use good cow manure if I can get it. I think it holds up. The water is not as good as peat, but I like the fact that it is a renewable resource and is generally less expensive than peat. Peat is not only, as I told you, it is also mined in Canada and then it is a little heavy. sending it, you know, all over the country and you know cow manure. I think it would be here from more local spaces around you.

You could probably find a local company that you can get it from, but I'm just going to take this cow manure that I break up. On the inside of the back, I would normally plant a lot of plants and I'll just divide them along the side of the bag that way so I can use my shovel for something like this and I'll just take several shovelfuls full. I want this maybe a third or a little bit more cow manure and about two thirds of this existing soil that's about rights will probably take up about half of this 50 pound bag so I'll probably take out about two plants per bag and I'm not going to worry about mixing it, it will take care of itself while I plant it, as I already showed you, I dug it a little too deep here, so I'm going to take a little bit and I'm just going to turn it over like this to get the mixture that I'm looking right there, okay, let's put this back here and see how it looks now that we're sitting, we'll probably be sitting about an inch when we're done here, so I think it's absolutely perfect, so I'm going to take this one out of the container.

You can take the containers and tap them on the sides this way and that will loosen them frequently. Oh, I'll play. the top of that kingdom of that right there and that will take them down right away after I've loosened them up this is a plant that has a heavy woody stem this variegated pittosporum so I don't mind holding it this area, but if you had something that was a little more fragile, she a little more tenuous, you know, at the base, you have to turn them over, put your hand in the dirt and take out the container like this and that's how to get this to put a spawn is not really root bound, meaning the roots are not really tight on this one.

I can do one of two things if so and they're not really wrapping yet. I'll just say like this and just use my fingertips and bring it a little bit closer. You can see, I can remove some soil and all of these roots, if you can see, are now pointing outwards and will continue to grow. out into this hole, if these had been wrapped around each other real tight, I would just set it aside here and take the shovel and just cut about a half inch right there and then do it maybe two more times like this and that They will cut the roots that wrap around each other and place it in the hole.

Okay, so our plants in the ground here, I'm just going to take the rest of this soil and punch it down. around and I'm not going to fill everything from one side up, I'm just going to fill a little bit, a little bit, all the way around and keep it a few inches below the edge of my root ball and move on. and tamp that time coming over here like this just with the toe of my shoe there, okay, that's tempting pretty good and then I'll fill in the rest of this trench that I just made with my shoe and that's mixing that cow manure. pretty good at the same time and we'll go around one more time, we'll tamp all of this down and I'll just move this extra dirt with me as I go, it will eventually find a home as I go like this, okay, that's nice.

Very perfect, it is in the soil tamping can. I'm going to come back here and remove the soil from the top of the root ball that I just put on top. I still see the top of the root ball as it was in the container, that's what I'm looking for, so it's absolutely perfect in the ground. The tamped organic material is not going to fertilize because it's fall right now, we want to put some type of mulch on this plant and I have these leaves. and natural things that fall from these trees. I usually don't cover these beds here just because I have all this organic material that falls from these trees in the fall so I don't really need it in this area and no it's not the front of my house it's an area where they are used for cuttings, but if it were the front of my house in this case, I'll just rake these leaves back, but if it were the front of my house, use pine straw here, which tends to be more available in the southeast and just lay a two or three inch layer around here and tuck it under and then after I tuck it under, I'll come back and take it out. back slightly from the base our other option that I'm going to put down now is going to be this hardwood mulch.

This is a brown dyed mulch that I'm going to pour. I used a little bit of this bag in my clay soil planting video if I want to watch it, I'm going to watch a lot of the rest of this okay, and what I just did is a great example of what happens in a workplace, especially when I was working in the yard and we walked out onto the sidewalk. Some hardwood mulch in a wheelbarrow will get it to where it was going and then you'll throw it in and it will end up lying right on the edge of that plant.

Here's a closeup where we have this plant planted and then a big pile of mulch. It ended up landing basically on its side, it ends up being kicked under the plant or raked under the plant and then not removed from the plant, so it ends up causing problems by retaining too much water or inviting pests. finish this, I'm just going to take this mulch that I poured here and I'm going to gently rake it around the plant. You can use the edge of this garden rake and also use it a little bit and even the back sometimes to smooth things out and that's it.

I'm going to go back like I said just to make sure I haven't piled up mulch on the trunk of this thing and that's going to be how I'm going to take these leaves that I had in this area and just pull them back here. I have all kinds of debris in my way and I just pull this back and use it as mulch in this area and that's it on how I'll plant in soils that are going to drain very, very well. I ended up putting the plant together a bit. I don't plant it flush.

I still pile it up. I just used some organic material that will hopefully hold some water in place or slow down the water coming down that hole when it rains, this is at the bottom of a hill so a lot of the water runs out. it will settle here, even if it dries out, it will end up settling in this space, so if you were Planting on that edge and it was an area where the water just washes away very quickly. You may have seen me use a lot more cow manure or maybe pop in that peat bag and use some of that because it will hold water a little better than cow manure of course the last step after everything is planted and mulched and it's all about watering it and in this case I would put the water hose at the base and just put it in a trickle. where it is just emerging and leave it there for an extended period of time and saturate the entire space around the plant you just planted.

If you are planting other plants, simply water one of the ones behind you while planting the next one, the next one, the next one, and then, after saturating all the space around it, let that space dry out again before watering it, We don't need to water the plants every day. I hear people say I don't know what. It happened to him, I watered it every day and the answer to what happened to him was that he was watered every day. The bush I just put in the ground is not something that is going to need constant watering, probably if you have saturated this entire space. around it and you live in an area where it normally rains, you are not in a desert climate, this plant will not need to be fixed for a couple of weeks, probably even in extreme heat during the summer, planting this plant, maybe just tackle it Once a week and whenever you want, I tell you that if you need water, drown the space around you and then do the same process of letting it dry, that drying process is the trigger for the plant to take root in the surroundings.

If the soil never dries out at the base of that plant, you really have no reason to pull it out and it's not often that I get to go back to a house that someone bought and has lived there for two years. We are going to make new gardens there. and the house has had an automated irrigation system. I can put a shovel under the bushes at the foundation and pull them out of the ground and the root ball looks almost exactly the same as the day it was planted, the plant had no reason to. look for water, in fact it was probably trying to retreat, there was so much water around it, so let your plants dry out, it won't hurt them, sometimes you will lose some leaves in the middle and they will die down a bit. -color, they will wilt a little, it is better to do that and then the opposite, which is to rot the roots because if you do that they will not recover, they are just fine, so that is the basics for planting in sandy soils or really very well- drained soils I also have another video on planting and clay or poorly drained soils if you want to see it some of it is a bit repetitive but parts are exclusive to planting in that type of soil thank you very much for watching the video and if it was useful, press the like button and subscribe to my channel for future videos.

Also comment below with any questions you have about planting, thanks again.