Applying Sand to The Garden - Friend or Foe?

Does applying sand to the garden help? Let's find out! For most people
I would not recommend adding sand to the garden since it can hurt, but
in some cases it can really help! We use sand and have seen amazing
results, so let's go through the benefits and costs of using sand in
the garden.
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PO box 131
Marysville, MI 48040

[tecumsehlittlebear]

this channel is also one of the best on YT especially for beginner gardeners.
Highly recommend this channel.
Also remember to grow big or go home!

[calebpease]

Luke great clip seen a bunch of them but first time commenting. I'm a MI garden and grew up on a farm. Parent's house in on a clay pan and there garden has always been water logged. We have been transitioning them to raised beds and because they already have a high organic content in the soil a little sand from my house has helped a lot.

I also wanted to thank you for your great harvest videos they really have inspired me to continue to expand my home garden and my parents. Thanks again and keep up all the hard work.

[NicoleLevit_]

Watching this sitting next to bag of sand I recently purchased to fill holes in my clay soil. Thanks so much for the info and warning!

[sams]

Filled my new raised bed with vermicompost I made over the winter. Really good stuff plants love it, the problem though it holds moisture so much that the plants then die from too much moisture. I was getting the idea that I needed sand to help with drainage. this video confirms my thinking. This may cost me a season of growing really good veggies with no added fertilizer. I try very hard to spend as little money as possible in the garden to make it worth doing dollar wise.

[sparklycrone]

I've always added sand to clay soils along with compost and peat or coconut coir to lighten soil. There's a balance to be had. No thing is all or nothing. Thanks
for the tips.

[scientificexplorergirl]

I agree with fire7side. I added a significant amount of sand to my clay soil and have had the best growing season I have ever had!

[FensterfarmGreenhouse]

You should have got an umbrella and a beach chair to do this spot Luke! lol.
Good information my friend.
Chuck

[zaxmom]

This is super interesting! Ty so much for covering this topic! Man, your channel is super amazing and valuable. Thank you again for being here for us all.

[debbitbertrand]

I really enjoyed the butterflies in the background. Says a lot for your skills
Thank you. I have clay soil. I was going to add sand.

[zpt-pizr]

Thanks for the pros and cons, I kept searching for information on the use of sand in my Hibiscus plant pots and you really helped me out. Awsome tips! Thanks for sharing.

[D.A.Hanks]

I learned in the early 90s, about mixing sand with clay. I had a habit of collecting sand from every dune field I encountered out West (like, by the bucketful). Eventually, I got the urge to mix some of it with my soil for a cactus in a pot. It's bad enough when you use coarse sand, but desert sand is already pretty fine to begin with. Yeah, I got orange concrete. NOW, in my raised beds that are 95% organic matter (I do have some clay that got mixed in with charcoal and ashes from the burn pile and run through the blender), I had no problem adding some stuff I found on the side of the road. It's 50 gallons of road sand and oak leaves that have mulched down over a decade or so. Good drainage, and I brought home dozens of earthworms with it, which I am happy to say are reproducing like rabbits.

[yearvet]

Sand has definitely helped me. When I first broke ground for my garden I was thinking it was heavy clay because of the way it compacted then dried out and cracked in the heat of summer and kept adding more compost. Good for my plants but didn't break up the soil as expected. Then I did a simple soil composition test. Get a quart jar and put in about 1 to 1 1/2 cups soil then fill with water leaving enough air space to shake it up well to break up the soil. Let sit for a day or two. The sand will settle to the bottom first, then the loam (organic material) then the clay will settle on top. The lines will be well defined. This is how I found out I had heavy loam with almost no sand and little clay.

[fireside]

I added some sand to my clay soil and it seems a lot better to me. I couldn't grow carrots and grew some Danver half longs this year that are probably 4 or 5 inches long and a couple inches across. Onions also look pretty decent and they used to just rot. I do mulch, which keeps the clay from getting as solid, but I'm quite happy with the results and plan to continue. In combination with mulching it works the best so far for root crops.

[AdamCraigOutdoors]

i add a scoop of sand directly to the area i plant carrots and radish. i do mean a scoop per 8' row and really mix it in. seems to really help lighten my clay up!

[coaltinkle]

I had success with using sand and topsoil mixed with clay. I planted watermelon seeds and covered with straw as a pest deterant. They did fine even not realizing I should have started the seeds inside in containers, This year I am nuts with my melons and also with the garden variety to!

[HUSAMWord]

What if mixing sand with peat moss and compost, is that good? Because in the country I live in we have mountains of sand and I want to use them to plant trees in containers . What do you recommend ?

[lucasgrowsbestyt]

Good video you seem very knowledgeable.

[rachelbruce]

Sand is absolutely the most frustrating topic in the gardening realm. I keep hearing contradicting information regarding beach sand/coarse sand/silica sand/builders sand, and then on top of it, different regions call them all different things, or the same thing but another grade. Ai Yai Yai.

[digvijaysrivastava]

Great topic u discuss ..since very few video regarding this topic on youtube & finally helpfull ..

[justinsanchez]

oh wow... i'm a know-it-all and i didn't know this about clay + sand. thanks for the gypsum tip! i'm in illinois (not far from you guys) and i deal with a lot of clay soil.