Just because you have a sandy Florida yard , it does n’t mean you ca n’t grow solid food .
Last week at the Palafox Market , a couple say me they were struggling to garden in their “ dire sand ” near the ocean . It can be tough , for sure , as it wipe out compost and drains quickly , becoming hot , and ironical , and Sahara - like just days after a rainwater .
Yet you’re able to garden quite well in Florida Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin . Jim Hawkins write :
When I lived in Niceville FL , mid 1980s . I give-up the ghost to the local fisherman ’s Co - Op and sometimes to Destin harbor to run into the returning boats , incur stack of fish bones and grit for my garden . I take all my neighbors subsist oak tree leaves I could feel ( at least 100 bags each year ) and put them into foot deep oceanic abyss mixed with the fish residues . Covered with about 6 inches of the 99 % pure guts and planted my garden . No rotted fish smell ! ! The first year was so - so as far as crops , but next three year , I was the talk of the town of the town . The city Administrator even came to see my garden . Based on my resolution , the Twin Cities , of Niceville and Valparaiso , launched a compositing center and pop the question back free composted mulch to residents at no kick , economize the towns tens of thousands of dollars each yr in landfill fee .
Oak leaves = carbon ; fish guts = atomic number 7 , plus all the gravid nutrients from the sea .
This remind me of an experiment we did a couple of years ago when we were lease our late mansion .
There we found a nap of grammatical construction sand that had been dumped some years previously at the leading edge of the backyard . It was almost pure masonry gumption , with a bit of red sub - soil sand coalesce in , disperse across the ground near an oak .
I borrowed a tractor and spread it out , then dug a few deep in it and laid down quarrel of cow pies , which I then bury under mounded bed .
On top of these mounds , I engraft cassava cuttings .
Much to my delight , we grew some of the substantially - looking cassava in that terrible George Sand .
Do n’t lowball the power of organic matter to meliorate grit ! It ’s also very easy to dig out root veg from Florida sand , which is an total welfare .
We ’ve also planted lasagna garden on top of sand , and made melon vine cavity , and watered the Baroness Dudevant with Dave ’s Fetid Swamp Water . All of these pattern we taste and tested across multiple homesteads , and our issue culminate in my bookCompost Everything : The Good Guide to Extreme Composting .
Jim cypher it out even before we did . And so have many others . Do n’t get the backbone defeat you .
It can be as simple as dig a hole or a deep , burying some various organic materials , then engraft on top .
you’re able to grow enough more than you think , even if you have nothing but construction sand .
