If a Flood Brought Sand to Your Field Could you Still Grow on it?

Many farming civilizations have learned that floods rejuvenate their fields. They bring rich soil down from the hills and deposit it on the fields. But some of the farmers affected by the recent floods in the SE US  have reported that their fields have a lot of sand now. Not clay or silt. I've observed some of the soil deposits along the Nolichucky River in Tennessee and it is very light with quite a bit of sand.

So what approach would a permaculturist take to this situation? I know that we have a whole forum about greening the desert. So there might be tips about growing in sand there. But could the farmers expect to grow their crops next spring?

What’s under the sand? I garden on something like 50’ of sand. I add clay in minute amounts, but would do more if I had it. I add all the carbon I can. Nutrients can vanish into the below so I don’t bother amending much other than mulch. But I grow stuff in my sand just fine.

i wanna know about what’s upstream on the nolichucky. down here in western nc, the french broad river washed some relatively long-term industrial properties downstream - a pvc factory among them. because of that, the flood cleanup has included trucking out massive amounts of somewhat toxic mud. sand sounds better than mud, and if there’s nothing scary upstream i’d be trying to plant through or into it.

David the Good was using compost teas and biochar to grow on sand.

Sand doesn't hold nutrients well, so I suspect he felt he got better results using compost tea watered in regularly. Biochar helps to hold nutrients and water. You might want to review some of his videos.

A lady on the forum, grew a market garden in sand.

She lived on an island so the soil was sand.

Her method was to add lots of organic material.  Any and everything she could find, vegetable scraps, leaves, etc.

I would suggest to those farmer to get loads of wood chips.

I also like the suggestion that Jay made for using compost tea.

Thanks, everyone. This permaculturist is using compost tea and biochar to remediate the soil in North Carolina.



It seems like there are lots of opportunity to build soil with hugelcultures. In some places, nature has scooped new holes and deposited logs and new soil right next to the holes. A layer of buried wood could capture a lot of nutrients that would otherwise run through the sand.