I have a large sandy spot in my front yard in central Maine. Since I need more garden space, I'm thinking of building raised beds over the sand. Nothing will grow there anyway and I'm thinking a sand base would allow the raised beds to drain well.
Is this a workable idea?
Thanks for any advice.
For what it is worth, I have always found that raised beds are dry anyway. They drain easily and have more surface area so evaporation is greater. Maybe you need to add a little organic material (compost, seaweed, manure) and grow root vegs in that area. Certainly the carrots, beets and parsnip will do well in a sandy soil.
As Dan has also posted, raised beds drain extremely well already. On top of that, voles like them, increasing drainage further. If you then add coarse organic matter they will drain so much you will have to water every day at least.(all this from personal experience). Here is my advice:
1) make sunken beds in the sand. Dig up the sand, replace with fine organic material only, so that the beds are slightly below the sand. 2) mulch heavily to above the sand line with coarse organic material. In time your beds will grow higher than the sand, as the mulch composts, so start 6 inches below at least. Bad for your back but good for your veggies. I wish I had done this when I made my beds in my sandy soil. My in laws have sandy as well, they have sunken beds in full sun, and their productivity is far higher than mine.
I live by the beach and had tried to grow veges with not much success. I laid down polythene, then old carpet on top of the sand and used compost, grass clippings, recycled potting mix from a farm, basically anything I could get, and made a new garden all together, and now have veges growing like theres no tomorrow. Found that when i added stuff to the sand, the sand would just keep coming back.
That's pretty much exactly what I'm thinking. An added benefit to this is you don't have to worry about weeds growing in the paths between your raised beds and you can garden in shorts and flip-flops!
Thanks.
Wendy wrote:
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