Gardening in a Sand Pit

[FILMNET]

Longleaf Southern pines huge tall trees
this sample is from are trees 11" long


Picture will not work now?

[drew51]

The site is having problems, put the pictures up once fixed. If you see the pics are only 156 bytes, it's not fixed. Edit to fix once site is working. The new upgrade to the site is not working right.
I was in CA and saw the white pines there. I thought they were as impressive as the redwoods. The redwoods were bigger, but fewer of them, and in bad condition. the white pines were in perfect condition and really great looking huge trees.

[Hermitian]

Originally Posted by FILMNET

... I was told Epsom salt will be nice form the Tomatoes in the ground.I have all seeds from the last years here, and have buy some new Italy seeds for this year.

Epsom Salts are Magnesium Sulfate. Magnesium is central to chlorophyll and sulfur will lower the pH -- which is probably already lower from the pine needles. Magnesium needs calcium to be present to be effective to the plant. And in turn there are other dependencies.

A better approach is to test the pH of the soil where you will plant your garden. If it is too acidic, then a box or bag of garden lime should have good directions on how much to apply per area to raise the pH into the 5.8 to 6.2 range. If it is too high, then iron sulfate is a tried and true method to bring it down.

As for magnesium, look for a fertilizer product for your tomatoes that contains magnesium in addition to standard, secondary, and micro nutrients.

[drew51]

Sometimes too much of a good thing is bad. Too much magnesium can reduce calcium uptake, thus leading to blossom end rot. I myself don't use epsom salts. I use a balanced fertilizer. I guess a foliar spray a couple times would not hurt. Although I agree it is probably not needed. I have used it to increase magnesium in my garden soil when it was low. I now compost the soil to keep a good balance of nutrients. When i first came to this house, the ornamental garden was low in magnesium. So i added some epsum just to get it to a more normal level. PH was high too, so that worked in my favor too. Speaking of compost, another reason i like pine needles as mulch is you can just put compost over them. You really do not want to do that with wood chips or bark. As they tend to utilize nitrogen when breaking down. Pine hay really doesn't steal as much if any nitrogen when breaking down. I do rake some of it back, but don't worry about doing a great job of clearing it all out before laying compost. i add a fresh layer after the compost. I do like pine bark as a mulch though. Also at my cottage I have oak, maple and ash fire wood. I harvest the wood myself, it is free, not purchased. Often my wood pile looks like somebody threw garden soil all over it from the bark breaking down into a very black rich looking soil. So i take the bark, put it to the side, and break it up and use it as a mulch up there. I have it, might as well utilize it!

I helped a friend figure out how to grow a garden in sand last year. He has 120 acres on which he raises cattle. He fenced in an area about one acre in size for his garden. It turned out the area he fenced is almost entirely sand. He planted watermelons, cantaloupes, cucumbers, and squash in mounds and installed drip irrigation to each mound, He found the mounds would dissolve back to level ground in one day from the water drip and moisture would quickly disappear into the sand. I showed him how to add some clay to the soil plus till in a lot of organic materials. I also showed him how to use short pieces of 1" pvc pipe with multiple perforations pushed into the mounds for moisture distribution. The moisture dripping into the pipe doesn't wash the mound away and is more evenly distributed in the mounds. He planted about fifty tomato plants I gave him along the fence with drip tape. Everything produced very well last year. This winter, he is tilling a lot more organics into his garden soil and it should be better this summer.

Ted

[greenthumbomaha]

Thank you for that information about the mounds. What seems like a well thought out idea sometimes "falls flat" . May is approx plant out here. Based on your info and the fruit maniac guys above, I"ll trial a 4 X 4 amended area for maters and do the bulk planting in smart pots using Espoma mix, topsoil, and Farfard compost previously recommended (if it ever comes from Ozbo.) If all goes well I can dump out the pots into the sand for next year.

Two or three raspberries will be off to the side of the house in partial sandy soil/ construction sand . It will be a hedge separating from the neighbor... Flanked my butterfly weed and prairie clover and other sand tolerant natives..


Would I be better off to bury the smart pots in the sand or let sit on top? Will I have to water less freqently if they are not above the "ground"? Would air pruning still occur? I'm there daily to fuss over them.

-Lisa

I've never done it, but I would think burying the pots would work well. It should help maintain an even soil temp in the pots. Where I live, pots tend to overheat in the mid day sun. I've always thought the excessive heat must be damaging to the roots, but I may be wrong. At the very least, a constant lower temp should slow evaporation of moisture from the pots.

Ted

[TomatoDon]

Raised beds are the way to go. Whether your property is sand, rock, or topsoil. Nothing that I know of is better than a raised bed. With one tall enough you can grow world class tomatoes on concrete.
Forget all the complicated and experimental, cross-your-fingers type stuff. Build raised beds and get ready for the best tomatoes of your life.

TD

Originally Posted by TomatoDon

Raised beds are the way to go. Whether your property is sand, rock, or topsoil. Nothing that I know of is better than a raised bed. With one tall enough you can grow world class tomatoes on concrete.
Forget all the complicated and experimental, cross-your-fingers type stuff. Build raised beds and get ready for the best tomatoes of your life.

TD

Yep! Raised beds do a good job for me.



But pots work well also.



If I had some nice sandy. loamy soil on my property, I would be growing in it as well. It all seems to work pretty well. You just have to adjust your technique to what you have.

Ted

[Salsacharley]

Nice stuff Ted!!

[drew51]

Looks awesome Ted! Very nice!!

Thanks Drew and Charley! I was just trying to make the point that some method probably exists for anyone who wants to garden. Pots and raised beds seem to be the best and easiest for me where I live, but other methods exist for other folks in different circumstances. It's fun and tasty to try different methods.

Ted

[luigiwu]

Ted, are those green posts, just tall steel t-posts driven into the ground? What is the horizontal piece that connects them? Do you think that frame is strong enough to vertically support indeterminates that are trussed up?

Also, I love your black pots, where did you get them?

Gorgeous setup!

Originally Posted by luigiwu

Ted, are those green posts, just tall steel t-posts driven into the ground? What is the horizontal piece that connects them? Do you think that frame is strong enough to vertically support indeterminates that are trussed up?

Also, I love your black pots, where did you get them?

Gorgeous setup!

Yes, they are steel T posts driven about eighteen inches into the beds and the hard soil beneath the beds. By weaving the tomato plants into the thin ropes between the T posts as they grow, I'm usually able to simply throw the tops of the plants over the fir strips at the top of the T posts. They seem adequately strong to support everything I've grown on them.

The pots were purchased from a local feed store for $2.00 each. They are 25 gallon in size and were originally full of a molasses, salt mix for cattle. After the cows empty them, the store owner/rancher picks them up and keeps them. Most ranchers burn them or dispose of them as trash. The brand name on the containers is "Sweet Licks" When I was asking the store owner last spring if he had any large containers I could use in my garden, he showed me those pots and I bought fifteen of them. He was running out of space to store them. We did each other a favor when I bought them and he was able to clear some floor space. They are very strong and durable. I would think you could ask any feed store if they can get "Sweet Licks" brand cattle lick containers. I've seen large trees planted in them in plant nurseries but they always told me they couldn't get the empty containers. I've always wondered what the landscape companies do with the containers when they plant trees for clients. They probably haul them to a local landfill.

Ted

Ted