How to Fix Light Sandy Garden Soil in the Vegetable Patch

Over time,

garden

soil

can become depleted and lose its nutrients, but not only does its structure become very

light

and

sandy

and that is not good for growing

vegetable

s in my day. I am self-sufficient and in this video I will show you. How to transform your

sandy

or

light

less

soil

into a better growing medium so that you can get the best harvest from your

vegetable

s, let's get into it, so how can you tell if your vegetable

garden

soil lacks that structure? just grab it and see if it flies easily through your fingers like sand through the hourglass some of the days of your gardening live well then it's light a good garden soil should be able to squish a little and I've said this many times and then you should be able to make a fist with it and then press and break it so it falls apart.

It shouldn't be sticky like clay, but it shouldn't flow between your fingers either. The other way to know is how the crop came about. How is the last crop growing or how are the plants growing right now? Here we have a little turmeric and a little Jerusalem artichoke. They are not growing very well, certainly not as robust, as green or as big as they should be. and that's because they're just not getting enough water and they're probably not getting enough nutrients either because when the water goes into this loose sand bed, it just goes straight through and washes all the nutrients away from the roots of the plants. so they look grumpy if that's a word and there's another way if you dig and you don't see a lot of signs of life, like I mean animal life, like worms, mealybugs, whatever, there's nothing here, not even larvae, not even a infestation, well that's a bad sign because you want your beds to be alive you want to see the odd worm or larva or bed bug or something like that in the ants, even but there's nothing, so how can we improve a bed like this?

There are several ways and it is really easy. and simple, we'll go back and fix that bed, the first example soon, but what I want to show you is the next one that has a similar problem, light soil and this one is quite light, a little bit of my own creation. I would like to recycle our potting mix and when you have an old pot that has some old dry potting mix in it, I'll throw it into the garden bed because it's good organic matter even if it's used up, but you kind of transfer that problem to the garden , which is fine because I know I can improve it more easily in a raised bed here, if you can see a little rust on the bottom here, that's because this is not a raised bed, this is an invitation if you want a proper garden.

Good garden bed for raised birds like the ones behind that don't rust. Check out the description below and you'll see links for the US, Australia and New Zealand, and where you can get the good ones. Yes, this land looses in great quantity. There's potting mix on top and what I've done here is knock down all the weeds and that will help, that's the first thing, if you have some young weeds in the bed, they haven't produced seeds yet. Get them down and use them, don't just pull them out because you're actually pulling up and depleting the soil more by removing those weeds, leave them there, cut them down, put them back in that soil and that's the first stage and then the next stage of this bed. of garden is this one that I am already preparing.

You can see at the top that the dirt is heavier, but it is not dirt. It's actually more cow manure than dirt. There's a little bit of dirt mixed into this and some. rocks and some pebbles and other types of things that add good minerals to this mix, but it's mostly cow manure and is pretty heavy on its own. Look how it almost looks like clay, but you can still see the bits of grass and organic matter. Through that, it's wonderful and eventually dries out and becomes a little less heavy naturally, as all soil or all organic matter does, but for this stage it's great to inflate your bedding and improve that structure with animal manure. , whatever manure you use.

It's also adding that extra nutrient, you don't want to overdo it. I only have a few inches up here and I'll just dig it in lightly with the rest of the soil to mix it up. I'm not going to go too deep for the worms, microbes and mealybugs and that will help distribute that soil through the top layer now I should also say that this cow manure has been in a pile rotting and decomposing for almost 12 months so no It looks like cow dung, it's very rotten and decomposed, it doesn't smell like poop, it smells very good, like good organic soil, and at first glance not many people could tell that it's actually a big, round cow burger. , but I want to add something else and it is a little fish fertilizer.

Now I haven't been able to get a good subscription for the last six months. We have rained a lot. My compost area is all wet and muddy, so. Ocean to Earth reached out to me and they gave me this product to try, but since then I also bought a bunch with my own money, so it's not all free, but I really believe in giving it to you. a quick recap this is made from fish carcasses and fish waste that come from the boat ramps when you are down south in the biga marimbula burmagui region and they collect all that fish waste from the boat ramps when the fishermen come in and put everything in, they put their waste in a special container that is collected and then they compost it in big piles and make this magnificent compost material that you can put right in your garden.

It's only available in Australia at the moment, but I think it's a fantastic idea. If I have an affiliation deal with these guys, that's a deal for you too. If you use the code I put under the video in the description, you'll get five percent off their three and 1.5 liter bags and also free shipping. I think it's a good deal and at the same time you're helping the environment, plus you're getting a really great product, but anyway the reason I want to use this compost here on top of the manure or mixed with it is because this will help the break down a little bit, I mean a heavier bed is always better than a lighter bed because light sandy soil doesn't retain nutrients it doesn't retain water, you have to water more frequently nutrients are easily depleted and If it's a little heavier, at least your veggies will do much better than a light sandy bed, this will just help break up the manure a bit so it's not as heavy and will also add some new minerals, trace elements and nutrients. and that should complete this bed, that's what I think anyway and this is what it looks like.

It doesn't smell at all, it doesn't smell fishy or anything, but look how black it is. Oh, absolutely fantastic. I'm going to use this whole package, a three liter package. I'm going to sprinkle it on top of the manure, now it's a matter of just digging this in probably six to eight inches down, take your time and make sure it's mixed well. Now I know some people will say, “Oh, remember what.” about no dig gardening, here you are digging and I get it when you have an established garden bed that doesn't need repair, the less you dig the better it will be of course because you're not disturbing the microbes and worms and all that kind of things or fungi, but if you find a bed that is very depleted, this is one of the only ways you can really improve the bed in a short period of time.

It's a matter of digging and pulling. You dig down and then you push back and that way you throw it in and you mix it up it's like making a cake except it's a manure cake, just right, even it out a little bit, that looks really good now, the last thing I'm going to do en I am going to add some mulch, in this case it is sugar cane mulch, you can use wood chips, you can use grass clippings as long as they are dry and have no seeds, otherwise you will get a lot of problems placing grass seeds in your bed, the reason I want to add mulch on top of this bed is that it will simply help settle the manure and compost mixture.

It will take a few weeks to settle, you can still plant directly into that and the plants will grow fine, everything will decompose at the same time as the plants grow, but that mulch on top will only protect them from scabbing or provide additional protection against elements of additional rain or sun or whatever the mulch itself is. It will eventually decompose and be completely absorbed into the soil. I think in this bed here I'm going to add some strawberries. Strawberry season is starting to arrive soon and I have a ton of runners cascading down from last season's harvest.

I'm going to plant those new runners here, you can dig in here right away, putting some together, that looks great, the job is done, a dry, sandy, loose, depleted bed is now good for growing again, now let's do the same with this one . but let's harvest this first, it's not bad growing, some good turmeric here dropped it anyway, look, here's the Jerusalem artichoke, it's better to eat it fresh or pickled if you want to keep it hard, otherwise it gets quite soft fast, but you eat the root. It tastes a little like artichoke but except it's the root and the rest is weeds and also some streaks of ruby ​​mustard, I'll just dig that in this it's worse than the other bed, it's very loose and you can see it's lost a little height too because it's compacted, but also the extra organic matter that was at the base of this bed is slowly decomposing and the bed is naturally sinking at this time that all the weeds and mustard are dug up just to give it that extra organic. matters down here, but what we're going to do now is add that manure into well-rotted manure that's been around for a while, this will spread it on top, okay, I've got to spray it everywhere, oh yeah, that's going to make a world of difference, smooth it out, it looks great, it's a big improvement over what it was, yeah, it doesn't slip through my fingers now, is that nice?

Let's put some mulch on top. I'm very happy with how this is turning out. to grow some good vegetables in this new season coming up, well I hope you enjoyed this video, if you did make sure you get a great regenerative degenerate, not a degenerate, but a great soil improving kookaburra. Like, share the video and subscribe if you haven't already. Here we go, subscribe and ring the bell. Thanks so much for looking. I'm going to get out of the rain, goodbye for now.