Growing in Sandy Soil

If you've got sandy soil, you know how hard it can be to grow plants in. Like any other soil type, however, there are ways to remediate and improve your soil in order to make growing in sandy soil possible.

sandy dry cracked soil in desert with small plant growing — Sandy dry soils like this dry desert dirt can be particularly challenging to grow in. It can certainly be done, though!

Challenges With Sandy Soil

Let's look at some of the major issues that come with sandy soils, before we delve into remediation techniques and ways to work with sandy dirt:

Poor Moisture Retention

Sandy soils present a number of challenges for growers. The biggest issue is usually a lack of moisture retention. Sand is the soil component which provides drainage and trace minerals, but without a high carbon content it has no sponginess to absorb and hold moisture. This is why sandy soils are often found in deserts and arid drylands.

lone small tree standing in barren desert soil beige clear blue sky with mountains in distance — *Sandy soil like this has an impossibly-hard time hanging onto moisture when it rains.*

Poor Moisture Infiltration

Because sandy soils have such poor moisture retention and erode and drain readily, they tend to be dry and hydrophobic.

Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links. Refer to the privacy policy for more information.

This means that rain events are poorly-absorbed as compared to spongy rich soils, which leads to more erosion and evaporation rather than soil saturation. Sandy soils often have terrible moisture infiltration rates, especially when they've become very dry prior to the rainfall.

Low Water Holding Capacity

Along with the inability to absorb and retain water, sandy soils also have very low water holding capacities.

Because sandy soils are often very low in organic matter content, the crucial component for sponginess, their holding capacity for moisture is usually pretty awful.

Compaction

High Salinity

Sandy soils often go hand-in-hand with high salinity (salt content) in the soil, due to either the presence of nearby sea water in coastal soils or the high rate of evaporation in arid climates.

desert sand native soil cracked dry barren dead gardening soil building — Native soil in the Sonoran Desert is extremely sandy and also quite high in salt content. This makes it very inhospitable to most plants, except those adapted to handle it

Erosion & Flooding

Ants

ant hills in sandy soil garden — Sandy soil like this is not only almost impossible to grow veggies in, but it's also perfect for ant colonies to take up residence. If your garden soil looks like this, that's a problem.

Alkalinity

Poor Soil Microbiome Health

Advantages of Sandy Soil

While there are a lot of downsides we've looked at with sandy soil (and you'll need to address these in order to work with it), there are also a few distinct advantages you'll have with sandy soil that other soil types don't have.

Let's check these out, and then we'll talk about what to do with your sandy soil to get it ready for growing.

Abundance of Trace Minerals

Good Drainage Once Soil is Improved

Great Opportunity to Learn Soil-Building

How to Improve Sandy Soil for Growing

Now that we've looked at the challenges that sandy soil presents, as well as some of the advantages, let's delve into how to actually work with it.

The following list will help you to mitigate each of the downsides inherent in sandy soil. In combination, these techniques will help you to improve your sandy soil and be able to not only work with it, but thrive with it.

Increasing Moisture Infiltration Rate

Improving Moisture Retention Ability

Increasing Water Holding Capacity

[1] According to the Kansas State Extension, each 1% increase in soil organic matter (SOM) content increases the soil's water holding capacity by as much as 20,000 to 25,000 gallons per acre.

Soil organic matter is the way to increase the water holding capcity of soil, especially sandy soils naturally low in SOM.

Reducing Erosion

Reducing Evaporation

One of the core tenets of regenerative agriculture is to always keep soil covered and protected. This keeps direct sun off the soil, and helps slow the rate of evaporation and lower soil temperatures during hot dry seasons.

Soils can be covered with hay, straw, leaves, pine needles, wood chips, unfinished compost, pulled weeds, dead twigs and branches, chop & drop, or living ground cover.

If your sandy soil suffers from high evaporation, as arid climates often do, it's crucial that you keep your soil covered and protected at all times to insulate it and lock in moisture.

Whatever organic source of ground cover you use, your soil will be protected and as the mulch breaks down you'll be building a fresh new layer of rich soil that will begin to improve your sandy soil little-by-little.

Combatting Alkalinity

If your sandy soils also come with high alkalinity (as many desert soils do), you'll want to acidify the soil in order to drop the pH down to a range that plants can tolerate.

Do a soil pH test with a pH meter and some distilled neutral water to determine whether your soil is alkaline or not. A pH of roughly 6.5 is ideal for most garden veggies and herbs. If yours is much higher than that, you'll need to acidify it for growing.

Use elemental sulfur as a soil acidifier. If your pH is very high, apply at least 5lbs per 100sq ft, twice per year, to gradually reduce soil pH. If pH is only marginally high, reduce this application rate.

Soil acidification is a slow process that will happen over a few years, so be patient and test your soil pH often to measure progress. Adjust application rates as necessary after testing soil pH again.

Reducing Salinity

If your sandy soil is high in sodium, you'll need to work to reduce the salinity content in order for plants to thrive. The best way to do this is with applications of gypsum (calcium sulfate).

Dig a cool sticker?