How to Fix Sandy Soil--with Gardening in Canada

you can even explain to your viewers how to do this and what you are feeling as someone who has never done it because from my perspective. I'm like just roll it up, yeah, tape test, it's done, so I'm not that good at explaining it after years of doing it. Yeah, that's probably the next step and then we'll see how exactly we're going to fix it. Okay, great, my favorite part of this video, so what we're going to do is pick a handful of dirt and then in your hand, I want you to take a quick look, you're going to remove a little bit, but anything that's stick , root or hard organic materials, like your compost, we will simply remove it. from the sample, to the untrained eye it just looks like beach sand that's a little darker, that's how it looks to me oh you're almost there, okay, not quite, but almost okay, so okay , I think you're okay, okay, so now I'll want a little less, probably half of that, okay, so you can see how the palm of his hand only has a little bit of dirt on it, but his fingers are bare, like this that that's exactly what we're going to look for and then everything I want you to do.

What we do is make a fist and we're just going to throw it into this water. Oh great, I should have done it with the other hand. Okay, take it out, but I didn't put water in my fist. Okay, so you want it. to look like this, not too much, no, you want, yeah, we want it a little bit wet, so like this, not too wet, just a little bit, okay, so you gotta loosen your face, yeah, a little bit, yeah, it's okay, and if You're using a sprinkler, really light, okay, a little bit more, yeah, okay, I'm glad you're here with this because yeah, it wouldn't have failed, so yeah, a little bit more, okay, so lift up the hands, okay, and now look, this is it. a little hydrophobic too and that's from your city compost, by the way, yeah, that was a bad idea, okay, so now squeeze a little, some water should come out a little better, there you have it.

We're going to cheat, so now what we're going to do we're not going to get much out of this, but okay, so what we want to do is take these three fingers and we're going to place this in a straight line. So you're probably going to have to tilt it like this and then you're going to take your thumb and squeeze it and see how much I squeezed it there, yeah, just a gentle pinch and then you're going to move. your way down with just another small gentle pinch and then we're going to gently move the pin down, so this will follow, yeah, it could go, okay, so that's all you have, so this right here, If I took this off, this is your tape, that's all you get, so it's a

sandy

soil

, okay, this is a

sandy

loam

soil

, so it's half an inch, yeah, not even like that, so this is our hypothesis is definitely correct, so let's recap here, we tested the soil in a pristine area and a no-till area and now it's my favorite part where Ashley tells me how to fix it, so what do we do with the rotation?

We light it and burn it all now, although I half expected this, no, no, this. it's workable, we can work with this, so it's not a pure sound, it's sandy loam, so if we look at the texture triangle, we can work within this, it has some clay, some silt and some sand, um, It really drains. quickly but it doesn't run out super fast, so if we look at our penetration test, we still have water in there, which is a good sign, that means our battery can be filled. Yes, it is not a bottomless pit, so our solution to this is irrigation. or some kind of hustle when it comes to watering, I would rather water, yes, so I think you know that when you plan your expenses for your property, that will be the first priority of next year, yes, this year, when we want to get we want to make sure that that we are mulching, yes, and that we are watering very regularly, just trying to keep the soil moisture high and controlled, so we are not going to till any more, yes, and it's not because I'm anti-till it's because the solution to you're no-till based on your soil structure, but also the types of weeds that you have, the types of weeds that you have, will make this worse if we write a report because we're going to bring up the seed bank, yeah, so These seeds are very common and will be the perfect place for a seed to hide, just like the perfect place for a bulb to hide in the ground.

Do you have a video on your channel specifically about that for any of my viewers who may be wondering if no-till is better or no-till is better for their situation, so I have some no-till and the issues or concerns with it, but I don't necessarily have one activated. tilling and when the situation should improve, but I can definitely agree in the comments, yeah, so it's a very valuable video idea for that sense, so that's our number one, just getting through this year well and then the plan future, in general, what we are going to do. What we're going to do over the next few years, decades, whatever the case may be, we're going to put up organic material like nobody's business.

Yes, we hope to get chickens and make a chicken tractor. Oh yes, and all the leaves, yes. The idea is that they put us in this winter, yeah, so we're literally going to build it and it's going to be almost like a resilient roofing method, a borderline mulch type scenario just because that's all we have to work with. here we don't have to make raised beds we don't have to do anything drastic sometimes with clay soils or super sandy soils our only way out is to go up yes this is not the case here I am very grateful because that would be so expensive, it would be so exciting, I know that I've spent in the city on raised beds and that's like the city and there's not much reason, yeah, and out here it's going to be drastically different, horrible, yeah. so we don't have that so we need to increase our carbon content we need to increase our humidity once we do those two things we're going to increase our microbial activity our earthworm activity you're saying there's not much here I'm not going to have any because of the lack of moisture and the good thing about this is when you use bagged compost manure or even just from the city there are worm eggs in that oh I didn't know that so it's okay with my The raised beds and the way I cared for Mine haven't tilled soil very much like this for about seven years now, so I've been using compost manure and humic acid is also a really good thing for this garden. and I've been building it over time and this year I was digging and I have amazing worms yeah and it's in a raised bed on a concrete crop okay that's amazing so they came from the compost they came from the manure they came from . some kind of input, so just because this entire area is probably devoid of earthworm activity doesn't mean this area has to be.

Oh, I'm so grateful because it's feasible, we can make this work, with such a high moisture carbon content and literally stack it. in some other things that you might want to think about for aggregation because you know how the soil cuts up when it falls into that hole, so that's a sign that we don't have aggregation, which will limit our ability to penetrate roots, which can cause you already know. root rot in some cases or just structure like hydrology, how water moves through the profile, you might want to think about using things like lime or gypsum to help with that and there are other weird things you can do like cat litter for example just to help increase the shear exchange capacity and just the moisture retention properties of the soil so okay yeah you're going to be perfect you're okay thank you so much ashley for coming to change roots and if you are not a subscriber to ashley's channel you should head over right now and go to

gardening

in Canada, that's where she is on YouTube, she is also on Instagram, same handle there and you have your blog, do you?

Is it

gardening

? gardening

canada

.net.net, okay, great, everywhere else on the Internet on Facebook. tick tock you name it everywhere oh I'm on tick tock but I'm horrible at it yeah but you answer it's been a very valuable 20 minutes so as always if you found this content helpful if you're in the area 3 or another. short cold weather gardening season definitely want to hit that subscribe button notification bell. You know the diary and every day I appear on Instagram and Facebook to show you exactly what I'm doing in this garden and mine in the city in real time.

See you next time friends, bye, okay, what are we talking about?