For 18 years I gardened on a country property with beautiful, sandy, dark soil. This soil was amazing. Unless there was still a foot of snow on the ground, I was plucking away at my gardens before I flipped the calendar over to read ‘April’. Many of my clay soiled garden friends were blessed indeed if they could get into their gardens before they flipped their calendars to read ‘May’.
Sandy soil is light and easy to dig in. It warms up quickly in the spring and since it has course particles that do not compact well, it also dries up in a hurry. Now, this is great when you wish to start gardening in early spring, but it poses a challenge when you’re trying to keep enough moisture in your soil during the hot, dry summer months. Also, since water passes through sandy soils quickly, nutrients tend to leach out in a similar fashion. What is a blessing in April and May becomes a curse in July and August.
Here is where a good dose of peat moss comes in. Sandy soils are grateful for an annual addition of peat moss. Peat has amazing water holding capacities and when mixed into sandy soil, boosts the soils ability to hold water and nutrients. Annual additions of peat, as well as compost and manure, will ensure that your soil will be in tiptop condition to grow the biggest and best foliage, flowers and fruit in the whole neighbourhood.
The curious thing about peat is that it is equally beneficial for clay soils. Clay soils are heavy and difficult to dig in. Clay is chalk full of nutrients, is slow to warm up in the spring and since it has tiny smooth particles that compact, it also stays wet for a long periods of time. In this case, what is a curse when you wish to start gardening in early spring, is a blessing in the hot, dry months of midsummer.
Peat moss provides larger particles that mix with tiny clay particles making the soil more porous. Water may than pass through more quickly and efficiently. What is a binding element in sand, has an aerating effect on clay.
If I could choose between a sandy or clay soil, it would be sandy hands down. It is easier to change a sandy soils structure then it is clay. More additions of organic fertilizer and manures are needed in the sandy soil, but it is always easier to work in.
When we moved from our country home, I actually took the soil with me. Yup, that’s right. We dug a pond comparable to the size of the Atlantic and had it all trucked to our new building site. Sure, we needed some of it to fill inside the existing old barn walls that would be my new garden, but, truly, I was just thrilled to know that, here too, I would be plucking through my gardens as soon as the frost disappears.
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