gardening/growing/permaculture in sand zone 6b sw Michigan

I would like to start a discussion about turning sand to a good growing environment. I purchased 5 acres a couple years ago and have been working on an orchard and vegetable garden. I have searched the internet about the subject and can't find much about my situation. I've found a lot about sandy soil but most of what I'm working with is not soil at all, just sand like at the beach. So far for my veggie area I have brought in large amounts of aged (cold)compost from a near by farmer and just put an average of 18" over the sand where I want to grow. It's working but has some issues. I grow cover crops in the off season, I'm in zone 6b. For the orchard I have drill 3' foot diameter holes with skid steer auger about 3' deep and amended with chicken run cleanings. I constantly throw kitchen scraps and fall leaves in run and clean out about twice a year or when planting trees. One of the big problems is keeping anything moist, the sand just sucks up any moisture. I have installed a couple irrigation wells on property to help. lots of work! anyway here's the start of the discussion, I look forward to input from others and sharing my experiences that have worked and failed. Thank you and happy gardening!

Welcome to the forum!

We have a forum member who lived on an island and her soil was sand.

She grew beautiful veggies for a market garden.

Her method was to add any kind of organic matter she could find.

My memory suggests that this organic matter was mostly vegetable scrap, etc.

I like to recommend coffee grounds, leaves, and wood chips because these are readily available for free.

You might enjoy her thread:

https://permies.com/t/120/56720/permaculture-projects/garden-fence-finally-finished-rainbows#498708

Sand into soil, it is a process!



I really like David the Good's content when it comes to soil improvement and experimentation. He is a little bit eclectic but has plenty of information.

I am going to echo previous comments and say that the key (in my understanding) is adding organic material and mulching.

Sand not has quick water infiltration but also has quick leeching.  You have seen it! You need to start amending to keep moisture and to attract worms to help process through that organic material.

A cheap (sometimes free) easy mulching solution would be to get arborist chips dropped off and start spreading them THICK. They will break down and compact quickly so don't fret. If you want to be EXTRA like me you can buy a bag or two of mushroom spawn (Winecap is my go too) and mix it into the wood chips if it is a hardwood (Conifers aren't appropriate mulch for this type of mushroom).  This works better for perennial/tree crops because seed starts can have issues dealing with thick layers of wood mulch. You could do the same thing but with leaf litter or straw in the annual beds for mulching.

It took about 10 years to get our Lake Michigan dune garden going.  You are doing the right thing by adding compostable organic material, keep doing it.  Two other things we did: grow bushes and thick undergrowth (we grow flowers) to protect the soil from sun and wind, and use drip irrigation all summer.  There are still many challenges, some trees make it, some don't, beach grass tries to take over, other invasive such as Chinese yam came in with compost brought in, animals and insects love our garden and treat it like a restaurant.  We love our garden, it's a little paradise near Lake Michigan.

Thanks for the video Tim. I have watched a bunch of his stuff but not this one. My sand is a little different but same concepts apply. I am collecting as much organic material as I can. Wood chips are not usually free in my neck of the woods. Blueberry farmers get them all so I usually have to pay to get someone to come here. I have a couple landscape companies dropping off fall leaves and I drive around getting people's bags off the side of the road. This summer I met a lady who has horses and like to keep the manure cleaned up so I get it all for free,just have to transport. The chips I get are mixed,when it rains I get mushrooms everywhere which I'm sure is a good sign.

Andy, which town by lake MI to you reside? I'm in West Olive. I plan on investing in drip irrigation next spring,I think overhead watering is contributing to several issues. I'm having trouble finding honey locust and other n fixing trees suggest by Stefan the permaculture orchardist so I bought seeds and tree starter pots I also plan on getting going in spring. I also got problem weeds from the farmer's cold compost(bindweed, and some crazy grass). All incoming matter is going in giant hot piles now that I stir every wed and sun with skid steer. I have been keeping it at about 140f.


Thank you for the reply Anne. I will check out the link.

If you guys are interested in what I'm doing please give my fb farm page a like. I try to keep it updated with progress.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100094100740256

I saw you are already working with bio-char, which is one of the strategies I've been investing in, in the last few years. Unlike the rest of the compost that I add, I can see the char accumulating.  

I usually add compost to a spot in a bed and cover with a light mulch of mostly pine needles etc. I try to let volunteers grow anywhere I am not planting something within the beds, other than grass, bindweed, and a few other species. When the volunteers start over-stepping their boundaries, I might pull a bunch and pile it up on top of the spot to slow them down while making some nice soil underneath. I've mulched the paths with bags of fall leaves split open to cover the grass with the paper and leaves, and also had a couple loads of softwood woodchips dropped off by the crews clearing the power-lines.

The chips, leaves, and soil underneath is filled with worms. I've started planting more varieties of ground cover now that the grass is gone. My plan now is to let the ground-cover overgrow a bit and then cover it with mulch when the time is right, perpetually creating compost while keeping a living root of a plant that is manageable in the soil as nearby as possible.

Hugelkultur has also been helpful with establishing perennials. I surrounded my main garden with a long mostly continuous mound where pine logs are buried about 1' deep with the whole pile being around 2' above ground level, with a small swale/ditch on the outside edge. The idea was to surround the garden with a bit of a windbreak and a sponge at the same time, while diverting some of the flooding we get with heavy downpours around the yard. This seems to have worked pretty well because we don't seem to get much flooding there anymore. I also don't usually water more than a couple times a year, only when it's really dry, and this year haven't needed to at all.

The first year I grew black beans all along the inside of the sandy mound and started planting black raspberries and wildflowers on the outside, while letting some of the weeds/volunteers grow, (yarrow, chickweed, evening primrose, mullein etc.) Now the raspberries are doing pretty well, and I planted the inside with honeyberries, but the volunteers are pretty overgrown, so I think this year I will focus my mulching on this mound.

 

I've also been trench/deep hole composting within the beds, primarily in the future corn/squash/beans spot. I put a cup-full or so of raw char in the bottom of my kitchen compost bucket to keep down smells and to somewhat charge the char, so it gets added too. This is more of a convenience thing usually, but the corn seems to grow higher in those spots. Another thing I've done is started making my compost piles right in the garden. It saves work and seems to give a nice boost to the plants around them. This spring I started a compost pile at one end of our 3-sisters bed and turned it every few days along the bed, all the way to the other end. This year the corn has done better than any other year, the butternut squash is looking promising, although the blue hubbard was completely wiped out by squash vine borers, and the beans are doing well enough.

Yes, yes, all the means and methods of increasing organic matter.

But...I wouldn't entirely dismiss the idea of targeted clay additions in small area. A tiny bit of clay will make a lot of difference *along*  with added organic material. I do this two ways on my property:

1. If I find some clay, I throw it in a barrel of water. After it sits a day it can be stirred and the water used in the garden.

2. I have access to un-fired clay bricks, so I use them to border growing areas. After a couple years the clay gets washed into the soil. This year I have wild clay-loving plants sprouting in those areas. Obviously, most people don't have access to unfired bricks, but if you ever did get your hands on a bunch of cheap clay soil, garden borders and such can be sculpted with the clay which will integrate with the soil in a natural manner.

John, we are in South Haven. My current goal with our city lot is to find fruit and berries that are pest resistant. We have a beautiful pollinator garden (lots of flowering plants) and a few fruit trees and bushes. So far I have found red currants and grapes easiest to grow. I am trying to get hazelnuts, peaches, blueberries, gooseberries and kousa to produce.

J yes I have been making bio char in a 30 gal barrel inside a 55 and just throwing it in the chicken run. I have a lot of trees I pulled in a pile that plan on burning when snow is on the ground a pulling out logs before they are completely burnt , this is in the future orchard area. it really really feels like I'm pissing up a rope with this sand.

Nathanael I have thought about clay I'm not sure where to get it and have heard and am aware that the recipe for concrete is clay and sand. Have you been doing this for a while? does it not turn to concrete?



sorry for delayed response everyone. my computer was down for a few days