What to grow in sand?

Hello,

I will start by saying that I've had success with Corn, Basil, and Cucumbers. I've got radishes growing but they never looked like radishes... They've been growing for over 4 months now and they are pretty plants with bright red stems, nice looking leaves. Can a radish be eaten months after it's 30 day due date?

I've got some carrots growing but the carrots look like they are still two months from maturing. The leaves are growing upwards, are about 6 inches. The roots aren't developing very much at the moment.

I've planted some cabbage but the cabbage doesn't seem to be taking to well.

The sandy soil is slowly turning into a better (not so sandy) soil, I'm thinking it'll take another year though before it's fully where it should be.

So my main question involves what to grow in sand in order to improve the quality of the sand? I've reworked the corn stalks into the sand and that seems to have helped a bit, and I keep adding dead leaves and such and keep watching bugs appear.

One other question... involving basil. I know basil will die if I let it bloom. If I let it bloom will it seed itself and create more basil plants? And if I have sweet basil next to purple basil next to lemon basil... what can I expect if I let them all bloom?

Reply to
Jim Carlock
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Jim,

Look around you. Tampa Bay produces most of the winter (Ruskin) tomatoes. Plant City is famous for strawberries. If you drive down h-iway 60 you will see fields of Collard and Mustard greens.

I understand your frustration with the sandy Florida soils. I moved to Anna Maria Island from Lakeland a few years ago and have been burying every bit of organics I can get a hold of (leaves, 7-11 coffee grounds, seaweed, even barber hair.) Keep adding leaves, especially oak leaves.

Cropwise, try peanuts (Spanish) or peas as a Nitrogen fixing green manure. Be sure to plant Marigolds to fight off Fla's biggest plant pest, Root-knot Nematodes. In the cool weather (winter, lol) plant Corriander and let it go to seed and dry out to attract ladybugs.

You can forget about growing root crops around here. I have never seen any home garden grown ones of any size. I don't know if it is the texture or the chemistry of our sand. Stick to cruciforms and fruiting vegetables like tomatoes, eggplant or peppers.

Good Luck,

Ed Upshaw Anna Maria Island "A Quaint Little Drinking Village, With a Fishing Problem."

Reply to
Laser6328

Hi Jim, The radishes sound doomed. Have they bolted (produced flowers)? If so, the seed pods that develop are edible. Cabbage really does better in a heavy soil. The split between what grows and what doesn't my not all be due to the sand. It may be a division between what grows well in hot weather and what does better in a cool climate. Possible?

To improve the soil, about all you can do is keep adding lots of organic material. It will probably take more than you think.

Steve

Jim Carlock wrote:

Reply to
Steve

Basil reseeds like crazy in my yard. I don't know how much it cross pollinates, but I find versions of Lettuce leaf, lemon, Italian, and cinnamon basil growing in the lawn, in clay, through the fence, and in the flower beds. I just crush a leaf on any of the plants and sniff to figure out which one it is if I can't tell by the leaf. If it doesn't have a good, strong scent; it gets pulled up.

Penelope

Reply to
Penelope Periwinkle

Things that help with sand.

1) drip irrigation, since sand gets dry so damn fast. 2) much more organic matter than you think. Conside one foot deep topdressing 3) sunken beds. This and 2) mean that you may have to dig up and dispose of some of the sand, and replace it with compost 4) most veggies do well in sand but, as others said, cabbage, fava, horseradish will not. 5) more frequent fertilizing

Some of my sandy beds are not so sandy anymore, but they did take over one foot topdressing, and the manure I use has chunks of clay mixed in, which helps. Veggies with a large taproot that is not eaten will help deposit organic matter at depth (example, dandelion) but this method will get you somewhere very slowly. You will just have to dig the sand, spread it one the lawn, and come in with tons of compost, or restrict yourself to what grows well there. I am sure watermelons will do wonderfully.

Reply to
simy1

That seems to indicate that you manage to keep water in there for the plants. That's the first trick with sand. You're also growing things that take a good dose of Nitrogen [corn & basil] and some that depend more on Potassium. [cukes]

Your root crops seem to be suffering. They need a high am mount of phosphorous. My garden is the same--- the only way I've ever had any decent carrots, beets or radishes was to side dress those rows with a fertilizer high in phosphorous. [the middle number in the fertilizer name-- I usually end up with 10-60-10 because that's what they carry at the local nursery.]

I give the whole garden a dose in the spring, but then I just concentrate of ph & heavy mulching. I use all my grass clipping green on my tomatoes and peppers. Then I side-dress my root crops every couple weeks with the 10-60-10.

Bring some soil samples to your local Co-operative Extension [or whatever the county agriculture people are called in your state] and have it tested.

Probably pretty tough-- but it won't hurt you.

I never grew cabbage, but I wonder if that could be Phosphorous, too-- don't they have a long taproot?

-snip-

There's been a garden on my garden site for 50 years. [with a couple

4-5 year breaks] I add a couple tons of organic matter every year. It is amazing how much the sand can swallow.

Jim

Reply to
Jim Elbrecht

Driving down 60 I've seen fields of cows. Maybe some trees farther on down closer to the east coast. It's been a long time, maybe 8 years since I've done the drive to Miami.

I've had success with Mustard Leaf. The leaves grow pretty nicely.

I'm seeing dead leaves are working great at turning sand into something more than sand. And coffee seems to help as long as it's mixed with the sand and left a few months with some other composting marterials before actually being used... (it kills cucumbers if applied directly to the topsoil and watered in).

Coffee grounds seem to be no good for cucumbers. The cucumbers seem to love a 1-2-1 ratio of fertilizer though.

I've got some pigweed growing that is supposed to draw things up and I kind of like it as it has these sharp thorns on it and it grows to about 5 feet high and vines like to climb it. I haven't found very many details about using it to bring nutrients up to the surface, most people seem to call it spinach (or amaranthus?). It must have come in some of the cow manure soil I bought from Home Depot, I don't know where it came from.

The peanuts won't survive the squirrels. The squirrels ate up about 50 cobs of corn I grew.

I'll keep that in mind. I'll have to do some research on the Nematodes. I think it might be possible that those could have taken out the cucumbers. I'm only assuming that it was the coffee grounds that did it. Everytime I've put the grounds in the area where the cucumbers are growing, the cucumber leaves started turning brown and looking rotton. There was a problem with silverleaf whitefly on the cucumbers over the summer, where I found that washing the leaves with dish detergent or just plain water seemed to seemed to help... but then some of the things I was washing off the leaves were Asian ladybugs... so I'm not sure if I did more harm or more good. At the time I was messing with the coffee grounds and a second set of cucumber plants, I stopped watering the leaves and left all the white, yellow and brown specks (eggs?) on the bottom of the leaves. I watched quite a few lady bugs in their larva stages develop. Those leaves on those cucumbers gradually turned brown and dried out. One vine is almost completely leafless, produced about 5 or 6 cucumbers before losing all it's leaves and is currently leafless. So I believe it was the coffee grounds that are doing in that particular cucumber vine... it looks pretty much done in.

The cucumbers seem to attract ladybugs very well, just passing that along back to you. I'll keep the Corriander in mind. The Cucumbers I've had success with are the Poinsett 76 / MarketMore 76 varieties. I did get some Yamato Cucumber vines going but they never fruited... and it appeared that the coffee grounds killed those, but perhaps they don't last all year long... maybe they only last for about 3 or 4 months at most... because if that's the case, I might need to rethink the coffee grounds.

I've got some carrots potted in a rich soil that seem to be growing right now. They just are growing up at the moment, rather than down. :-) I think you're right about the root crops.

Cruciform? What exactly is that one? I looked it up at:

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all I see is having four parts... or cross and most of the links tend to go to religious references, assuming the cross that Jesus Christ and others have hung upon as used by the Italians?

I did find cucumiform though which indicates an object in the shape of a cucumber. :-)

Thanks, Ed.

-- Jim Carlock Post replies to newsgroup.

Reply to
Jim Carlock

I looked up cucumbers in one of my trusty Rodale "How To's" and it seems that they like acidic soils (5.0-6.8) so I don't think that coffee grounds hurt your plants. You do need to give them lots of Phosphate and Potasium.

How wet is your soil? Could your leaf browning be caused by fungus? That would start with round spots and soft spots on fruit.

Someone may correct me but I believe "Curciforms" are leafy plants with opposing leaves. The ones that we keep hearing are good for us: Spinach, Collards, Turnips, Brussle Sprouts, etc

Ed.

Reply to
EDUPSHAW

I'm in central Florida and also have a sand garden. Jim, are you serious about the ton of organic matter or was that just a way of saying "lots an lots"? And if you really did mean a ton, how big a space is it?

I generally have pretty good luck in fall and spring if I add lots of compost. I grow a variety of leafy greens, some beans, tomatoes and my zucchini is doing well this year. Summer is just too hot to grow much (a local friend has good luck with black eyed peas). I sometimes think that the mustards will grow in beach sand.

David

Reply to
David

The soil is sand for the most part that has been turned and mixed with some dead dried out leaves, some dead dried grass clippings, some dead dried oak leaves, a variety of other leaves and stems. As sand it drains very well. The other stuff I've mixed in seems to keep it from draining so quickly.

Cruciform according to the definition at dictionary.com: (Bot.) having four parts arranged in the form of a cross.

I'm thinking along the lines of maybe Spanish Needle, where there are three leaves on a stem. I don't know. Maybe someone else can help out.

While going through things, I found the word cucurbit...

And it is possible, based that what I thought were Asian LadyBugs are really cucurbit beetles (spotted cucumber beetles). The leaves started to dry out and wilt. I'm pretty sure some of the ladybugs I saw were actual ladybugs. But there were quite a few bugs out there. I watched some as they developed through their larva stages. I've spent the last hour or so looking up stuff on cucurbit, cruciform and all and I have to give up on it and get some other things done. Perhaps there was a combination of ladybugs and spotted cucumber beetles.

I should have took some pictures of the bugs. :-)

Reply to
Jim Carlock

No flowers yet.

Very possible. Alot of stuff doesn't like the heat of summer here.

Funny... I cleaned out the gutters last week, a couple years ago a tree started to grow in the gutter. I think I found alot of good stuff in the gutters. The tree that started growing in the gutter is now growing on the side of the house, is about 14 feet tall.

-- Jim Carlock Post replies to newsgroup.

Reply to
Jim Carlock

I've rarely seen ladybugs on my cucurbits (cucumbers, melons, squash). But I *always* see cucumber beetles. They can spread diseases such as bacterial wilt and mosaic virus.

I grow my cucumbers in a screened box, to exclude the cucumber beetles, which means I only grow the types that set fruit without pollination. Otherwise the bacterial wilt will wipe them out.

My soil is really sandy, too. My main fertilizers are alfalfa pellets and compost made with shredded leaves and large amounts of coffee grounds. That works for me because my soil test revealed abundant amounts of phosphorous but very limited amounts of potassium. Phosphorous tends to stick around in soils, but potassium leaches. Coffee grounds and alfalfa add nitrogen and potassium but not so much phosphorous.

Youshould consider having your soil tested to find out what your critical nutrients might be...

Reply to
Pat Kiewicz

-snip-

It was a wild-ass guess. The garden has shrunk to about 50 by 50 as I get older.

I'll try to estimate a little closer-- I mow about once a week from June through August I mow my lawn & bag my grass. - To keep the math simple and guess that I probably miss a couple weeks we'll call it 10 mowings. I empty the bag 6-8 times each mowing, so that's 60-80 bags of grass. 50 lbs per bag [another wild guess] would give me 3-4000 pounds of grass. I probably add a few hundred pounds of maple, ash & oak leaves to that in the fall.

I've been doing this since 1986 [with a couple years off for illness]. The previous owner had a garden on this spot since the 50's at least & he said he took most of the clippings from his side-business [he and his sons mowed a few lawns] and turned them directly into the soil.

Still, there is just a very subtle difference between my garden and the mason's sand that I order from the concrete vendor.

A least I don't often have heat problems. Upstate NY--- usually my neighbors complain about cold & wet ruining their gardens. [most of the county is clay-- my garden is an oddity] The sand works well for cold & wet.

I should try to grow more of them. My kids like broccoli & cabbage.

My biggest weeds are purslane, lamb's quarters and garlic mustard. When the purslane starts disappearing I know I'm making some headway--- but it usually comes back with vigor in a couple years. [at least it's tastey] The garlic mustard [a brassicaceae] does indeed persist anywhere I neglect for more than a couple weeks.

Jim

Reply to
Jim Elbrecht

I live south of Tampa and for years tried to have a decent garden. Composted everything I could find in the neighborhood and after 10 years, nothing changed. A lot of near pure sand full of root knot nematodes.

After vapam was pulled from the market, the nematodes always won.

I started expirmenting with hydroponics and today after 20 years of learning, I have an abundance of vegetables year around. Hydroponics has it's own problems, but it eliminates most of the problems of growing in this sandy nematode filled soil.

Norm

Reply to
Norm Rohrabaugh

Here in Australia some ladybirds/ladybugs are attracted to the leaf of curcubits and potatoes, and they rasp the green layer off the leaf to leave a transparent patch. You see this small area of damage right where each bug is located on the leaf, so they are strongly implicated! I pick the ladybugs off the leaves and squash them. They obviously are not the helpful ones that eat aphids.

What to plant in sand? I grew the pink sweet potatoes (yams) in some unimproved very sandy soil, growing them from slips (rooted lengths of runners). It was difficult to keep the water up to them during the height of summer, but I covered the soil surface with leaves and compost and the plants thrived and produced a heavy crop of delicious tubers. Harvest as needed.

Reply to
John Savage

Jim,

John Savage is right about Sweet Potatoes growing easily in sand.

DON'T DO IT!!!!! DON'T DO IT!!!

I have ruined two gardens by growing sweet potatoes. They are more persistant than nut-sedge or wire-grass. Once they are established, that's all you will grow. Even "Round-up" does not kill them all.

Ed

Reply to
Laser6328

Composting everything in the neighborhood for ten years and still a "lot of near pure sand...". I don't think you live south of Tampa I think you must live on the Sahara desert. Bill

Reply to
Bill

Or on a giant sandbar...

Reply to
EDUPSHAW

The organic matter does seem to quickly leach out of the sand in Florida. But there is hope: I found an earthworm in my garden this weekend. Not in a pot, actually in the ground.

Reply to
David

Norm says he..."composted everything? In the neighborhood....?" This is what I do: Right now I have about 25 bags of leaves in the back yard collected from neighbours. I have already chewed up another 10 or so (with my lawnmower) that are composting...I gather grass cuttings from neighbours: I collect coffee grounds and vegetable scraps from several restaurants; produce from a produce store etc, etc. That is what I envision when someone says they composted everything....

Bill

Reply to
Bill

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