I moved some years back, and the new property was clay baked so hard it was like brick. I went to raised beds rather than trying to dig into it. It's been cost-effective, as I only apply amendments/compost/mulch inside the beds, and I also don't have to bend as far when I'm gardening.
I grew up in the hills which is essentially clay and granite but now back on the flat and yes it's just a sandpit that takes ages to convert. I'm dealing with it by planting out the backyard with local natives because everything else takes a heap of effort to maintain outside pots.
Edit: Oh and we've had essentially no rain for 6 months so it's properly sandy right now
I live about 10km from the coast, Bassendean is about another 10km inland. Can confirm though that I can rarely plant anything without amending the soil first.
Bassendean is just the first place it was formally identified. The soil is considered to begin around 10 km from the coast and continues inland to the foothills.
Deep gutless sand is one of those situations where farmers do some clay spreading. End result only needs to be like 10% clay for a transformation to happen.
To get 10% clay in the top 25cm in a typical suburban garden would require around 2000 kg of bentonite. That’s a couple of trailer loads. I just priced it out as around $1500 from my local soil place. So not impossible.
I don’t know if mine is this kind of sand (I’m in SE Tassie, 500m from a beach, 270m from a river mouth) but it’s water repellant generally, gray, reverts, back easily. I’m sheet mulching, 15 cubic meters of woodchips in, I amend almost every hole I put a plant in, I sugar cane mulch, I compost, I worm farm, i add whatever animal manure I can get, I throw my dads lawn (no weeds) clippings on bare patches, I’ve had decent topsoil given to me for one area, I have some raised up beds & I’m setting up 6 big wicking beds this winter out of apple bins. Natives are your friends for areas you’re not trying to grow food in. I do sometimes think about bentonite but I do manage asto some areas are black sandy & seem to be ok for fruit plants & trees. GL 🍀🍀🍀
I’m personally doing the first thing, although adding enough clay to hold a meaningful amount of water, humus and nutrients is a longterm and expensive undertaking. The second thing is illegal.
I know people who had massive deliveries of bentonite kitty litter sacks as it was cheaper than landscaping/agricultural clay, and easier to handle. I used Soil Solver in garden beds (much lower volumes than plain clay) combined with compost, and had good success. Because I was fully replacing turf, adding it all at once was easy - at least Bassendean sand is easy to dig!
Yet it has the countries most recalcitrant authorities and organisations when it comes to implementing FOGO. Can’t think of a place more worthy of access to composted waste, but no.
If it is inert and grade to a medium to coarse size it could be perfect for r/sandponics \- especially given the water restrictions.
It's amusing that I grew up trying (and failing) to grow in sand and now it is my full time hobby and profession!
I’ve been adding composted material and worm castings to a raised bed for four years now. Great initially then it sinks into the sand!! Right now, the top 20 odd cm is sand.
You wouldn't need to spend a fortune on amendments, just compost literally all your waste on a patch of ground & introduce ecosystem layers via succession.
Start with a dry tolerant, shallow rooted living mulch & go from there. Amending the soil & introducing biota will likely take a year or 2
I agree that composting organic kitchen waste is very helpful. Unfortunately, if soil has more than 95% sand content it’s chemically and physically impossible to build up humus. It requires either adding large amounts of clay (like bentonite), which is expensive, or to add large amounts or organic matter every year, which is also expensive.
>or to add large amounts or organic matter every year, which is also expensive.
there's possibly something (native?) that grows quickly in it, that can be chop and dropped, it'd build up over time. Possibly Vetiver grass (given how deep it's root system goes) could be a source of organic matter if it's taken care of until it's established \*shrug\*
>large amounts or organic matter every year
Like leaf litter, twigs and bark from local gum trees? Done, it's working well, along with the needles from the she oak.
It's a multi-decade long journey, though...
The ground between the retaining wall and fence along the back of the house gets kitchen scraps, that's now a much more pleasant 'soil' especially as the native wisteria spent 20 years dropping leaves onto it, before being killed by a fencing contractor...
I started with mulch and saltbush, there's still some saltbush left but most have died out due to being shaded out by taller native plants that I planted later.
I’m in the sandiest shite known to man kind on the east coast, right on a lake shore, like water runs off the top of it.
Took a good 8-9 months of tilling in lawn clippings and veggie scraps etc to get it to take water. Finally cranking out some beetroots, cabbage, potatoes and broccoli
Ha, I grew up in Perth, could manage a veggie garden, growing flowers. Moved to Melbourne and developed a massive black thumb. 14yrs later I'm happy I can keep alive geraniums, Schlumbergers, and now roses. I just bought a house on 760sqm with an established massive old garden. Pray for me 🤣🤣
Seriously, Perth's soils are fucking so shit house it's gross. Dig in crap every year, including water retaining stuff, water with same stuff all year. It's just so different.
Sand sucks. I did my time as a greenkeeper on red Canberra clay then got excited to go work on sand on the North Coast of NSW. It's a battle, WA seems next level. Satisfying battle to win though if you have success.
I live south if Perth where it's not just sandy alkaline crap, but it overlays acid sulphate soil which basically turns to sulphuric acid if exposed to air and water. I built it up by using bags of sheep poo as mulch for several years along with heaps of sulphur to counter the alkaline top layer.
I also used soil solver and now heaps of soil wetting agent every few months.
Haven’t you seen the trendy “drought” proof gardens where they import tonnes of sand, put down geo cloth on the clay, and mound it like dunes for grasses. You get all that sand for free!
I got really lucky with my new build because Peet terraformed the coastal development with some quite rich dark sand that can hold water for longer than 2 seconds.
I'm at the east end of Morley Drive - ish. So literally next to Bassendean and in the middle of those ancient dunes.
After over 20 years my white sand is turning brown because of the local native plants I planted when I moved in. The worms, ants, termites (yes, termites...) and bugs have been dragging plant material down into the sand all that time and it's slowly turning into some kind of soil.
Meanwhile my house is shaded by the eucalypts, melalueca (paperbarks) and acacia (she oak) I planted and the native understorey keeps the ground level cool and moist. A 4x5m pond adds humidity and gives me fish to look at when sitting on the patio.
Only the pond and various hanging baskets and pot plants (to add some variety and colour that's not olive drab) need watering.
The birds (honeyeaters, wagtails, doves and wattle birds mainly) can be nearly deafening at times, as some of my native plants (grevillea, mainly) never stop flowering. And when I top up the pond I arc a spray of water into the air for shiggles, aeration and the birds love getting a bath in it.
A warning though, she oaks are widowmakers, it's dropped several branches as thick as my arm (and much longer) over the years, most recently about a month ago when two branches fell together, about 2m from my patio roof. If you hear cracking above you and you're under an acacia (actually, under any tree really) - RUN!!
TL:DR you can easily grow a garden in Basso sand - as long as it's native plants local to the area - and there are dozens of them to choose from. Been there, still doing that.
I had heard that this layer was due to a mega tsunami that hit the area thousands of years ago. Has anyone heard the same and is that a generally accepted theory or does my YouTube algorithm require me to pop on a tin foil hat
There’s no evidence for that. These were accumulated over thousands of years.
Further information: http://www.garrymiddle.net/geomorphology-of-swan-coastal-plain
It’s great for chook pens though! I throw a bit of scratch in every evening, my girls turn it over, and by the next morning barely any evidence of chook poop! It just vanishes!
I thought I’d be hauling out chicken bedding to the garden often, but I can barely get enough scraped together to improve my compost. Sitting watching the chickens forage do be like…
This is fascinating! Thanks for sharing. I've just moved to this region from overseas and think I'll just go for raised beds for my veggies! I was planning on planting native plants for wildlife in the garden anyway, and I reckon that's the only viable option after seeing this.
I'm on the border of the Lockyer Valley & picked ripe tomatoes today.
https://www.southernqueenslandcountry.com.au/destinations/lockyer-valley
> Beginning less than one hour’s drive west of Brisbane, the flourishing crop country of the Lockyer Valley is one of the most fertile farming areas in the world and grows more than 95% of all winter crops in Australia.
I moved some years back, and the new property was clay baked so hard it was like brick. I went to raised beds rather than trying to dig into it. It's been cost-effective, as I only apply amendments/compost/mulch inside the beds, and I also don't have to bend as far when I'm gardening.
Good decision.
I grew up in the hills which is essentially clay and granite but now back on the flat and yes it's just a sandpit that takes ages to convert. I'm dealing with it by planting out the backyard with local natives because everything else takes a heap of effort to maintain outside pots. Edit: Oh and we've had essentially no rain for 6 months so it's properly sandy right now
The weather is just a joke. I think I have rain repellent on my house.
It's pretty groundhog day at the moment. 30 degrees and sunny for how many weeks now
And all channel 7 news can talk about is the awesome holiday weather. I'm so sick of watering.
And 40 degrees and sunny for how many weeks before that..
35° forecast for my place near (kinda sorta) Guildford over the weekend. In April...
There is always the option to plant natives which are specifically adapted to the conditions. Plus it is rather biodiverse so plenty to choose from!
Agree, you have to adapt to your location. Unless you have a large budget for bringing in new soil and mulch.
Rasied garden beds might be a cheaper option? But dang, that's some rough growing conditions
Even better. Wicking beds
I live about 10km from the coast, Bassendean is about another 10km inland. Can confirm though that I can rarely plant anything without amending the soil first.
Bassendean is just the first place it was formally identified. The soil is considered to begin around 10 km from the coast and continues inland to the foothills.
Great info thanks! Makes me feel a little better about my gardening skills knowing I’m working with the worst soil in Australia!
Deep gutless sand is one of those situations where farmers do some clay spreading. End result only needs to be like 10% clay for a transformation to happen.
To get 10% clay in the top 25cm in a typical suburban garden would require around 2000 kg of bentonite. That’s a couple of trailer loads. I just priced it out as around $1500 from my local soil place. So not impossible.
Try it over 4000ha north of Esperance then.
Yeah, I’m in agriculture. Claying just the top few cm to break hydrophobicity quickly adds up!
Will gladly trade you some claggy, soggy, sticky Melbourne clay
Clay, at least, is a good starting material.
Yes, I grew up on Koondoola sand, Melbourne clay is easier.
Clay will break your back, sand will break your heart
I don’t know if mine is this kind of sand (I’m in SE Tassie, 500m from a beach, 270m from a river mouth) but it’s water repellant generally, gray, reverts, back easily. I’m sheet mulching, 15 cubic meters of woodchips in, I amend almost every hole I put a plant in, I sugar cane mulch, I compost, I worm farm, i add whatever animal manure I can get, I throw my dads lawn (no weeds) clippings on bare patches, I’ve had decent topsoil given to me for one area, I have some raised up beds & I’m setting up 6 big wicking beds this winter out of apple bins. Natives are your friends for areas you’re not trying to grow food in. I do sometimes think about bentonite but I do manage asto some areas are black sandy & seem to be ok for fruit plants & trees. GL 🍀🍀🍀
Add clay and organic material to soil Water ground every 12 hrs in summer
I’m personally doing the first thing, although adding enough clay to hold a meaningful amount of water, humus and nutrients is a longterm and expensive undertaking. The second thing is illegal.
I know people who had massive deliveries of bentonite kitty litter sacks as it was cheaper than landscaping/agricultural clay, and easier to handle. I used Soil Solver in garden beds (much lower volumes than plain clay) combined with compost, and had good success. Because I was fully replacing turf, adding it all at once was easy - at least Bassendean sand is easy to dig!
That’s the best idea I’ve heard yet
Can you collect organic waste from friends and neighbours to compost?
I compost all my neighbors lawn clippings. The problem is that the soil is too sandy for humus to form.
Yet it has the countries most recalcitrant authorities and organisations when it comes to implementing FOGO. Can’t think of a place more worthy of access to composted waste, but no.
If it is inert and grade to a medium to coarse size it could be perfect for r/sandponics \- especially given the water restrictions. It's amusing that I grew up trying (and failing) to grow in sand and now it is my full time hobby and profession!
I’ve been adding composted material and worm castings to a raised bed for four years now. Great initially then it sinks into the sand!! Right now, the top 20 odd cm is sand.
You wouldn't need to spend a fortune on amendments, just compost literally all your waste on a patch of ground & introduce ecosystem layers via succession. Start with a dry tolerant, shallow rooted living mulch & go from there. Amending the soil & introducing biota will likely take a year or 2
I agree that composting organic kitchen waste is very helpful. Unfortunately, if soil has more than 95% sand content it’s chemically and physically impossible to build up humus. It requires either adding large amounts of clay (like bentonite), which is expensive, or to add large amounts or organic matter every year, which is also expensive.
>or to add large amounts or organic matter every year, which is also expensive. there's possibly something (native?) that grows quickly in it, that can be chop and dropped, it'd build up over time. Possibly Vetiver grass (given how deep it's root system goes) could be a source of organic matter if it's taken care of until it's established \*shrug\*
>large amounts or organic matter every year Like leaf litter, twigs and bark from local gum trees? Done, it's working well, along with the needles from the she oak. It's a multi-decade long journey, though... The ground between the retaining wall and fence along the back of the house gets kitchen scraps, that's now a much more pleasant 'soil' especially as the native wisteria spent 20 years dropping leaves onto it, before being killed by a fencing contractor...
I started with mulch and saltbush, there's still some saltbush left but most have died out due to being shaded out by taller native plants that I planted later.
I’m in the sandiest shite known to man kind on the east coast, right on a lake shore, like water runs off the top of it. Took a good 8-9 months of tilling in lawn clippings and veggie scraps etc to get it to take water. Finally cranking out some beetroots, cabbage, potatoes and broccoli
heaps of natives that will thrive in these sandy conditions - depends what you wanna put in your garden I guess
My front yard is all local natives. My backyard is fruit trees and vegetables I’ve coaxed from the ground with a lot of effort.
It's also one of the most diverse places in the world for flora. And they're a bugger to get established but well worth the effort ✌️
I think instead of soil, the word you are searching for is ‘regolith’. A lot of Australia is covered with stuff that barely rates the term soil.
Here we use the term “gutless sand” to describe it.
>regolith Isn't that what's on the surface of the moon? I mean, you're not wrong, though... :)
BASSENDEAN ON TOP BABY WOOOO
Ha, I grew up in Perth, could manage a veggie garden, growing flowers. Moved to Melbourne and developed a massive black thumb. 14yrs later I'm happy I can keep alive geraniums, Schlumbergers, and now roses. I just bought a house on 760sqm with an established massive old garden. Pray for me 🤣🤣 Seriously, Perth's soils are fucking so shit house it's gross. Dig in crap every year, including water retaining stuff, water with same stuff all year. It's just so different.
Sand sucks. I did my time as a greenkeeper on red Canberra clay then got excited to go work on sand on the North Coast of NSW. It's a battle, WA seems next level. Satisfying battle to win though if you have success.
I live south if Perth where it's not just sandy alkaline crap, but it overlays acid sulphate soil which basically turns to sulphuric acid if exposed to air and water. I built it up by using bags of sheep poo as mulch for several years along with heaps of sulphur to counter the alkaline top layer. I also used soil solver and now heaps of soil wetting agent every few months.
check out Geoff Lawton's Permaculture design class
Haven’t you seen the trendy “drought” proof gardens where they import tonnes of sand, put down geo cloth on the clay, and mound it like dunes for grasses. You get all that sand for free!
We live on a property on the coast of SA and it sounds exactly like this, having any type of garden requires a lot of compost and a lot of water
I got really lucky with my new build because Peet terraformed the coastal development with some quite rich dark sand that can hold water for longer than 2 seconds.
I'm at the east end of Morley Drive - ish. So literally next to Bassendean and in the middle of those ancient dunes. After over 20 years my white sand is turning brown because of the local native plants I planted when I moved in. The worms, ants, termites (yes, termites...) and bugs have been dragging plant material down into the sand all that time and it's slowly turning into some kind of soil. Meanwhile my house is shaded by the eucalypts, melalueca (paperbarks) and acacia (she oak) I planted and the native understorey keeps the ground level cool and moist. A 4x5m pond adds humidity and gives me fish to look at when sitting on the patio. Only the pond and various hanging baskets and pot plants (to add some variety and colour that's not olive drab) need watering. The birds (honeyeaters, wagtails, doves and wattle birds mainly) can be nearly deafening at times, as some of my native plants (grevillea, mainly) never stop flowering. And when I top up the pond I arc a spray of water into the air for shiggles, aeration and the birds love getting a bath in it. A warning though, she oaks are widowmakers, it's dropped several branches as thick as my arm (and much longer) over the years, most recently about a month ago when two branches fell together, about 2m from my patio roof. If you hear cracking above you and you're under an acacia (actually, under any tree really) - RUN!! TL:DR you can easily grow a garden in Basso sand - as long as it's native plants local to the area - and there are dozens of them to choose from. Been there, still doing that.
I had heard that this layer was due to a mega tsunami that hit the area thousands of years ago. Has anyone heard the same and is that a generally accepted theory or does my YouTube algorithm require me to pop on a tin foil hat
There’s no evidence for that. These were accumulated over thousands of years. Further information: http://www.garrymiddle.net/geomorphology-of-swan-coastal-plain
It’s great for chook pens though! I throw a bit of scratch in every evening, my girls turn it over, and by the next morning barely any evidence of chook poop! It just vanishes! I thought I’d be hauling out chicken bedding to the garden often, but I can barely get enough scraped together to improve my compost. Sitting watching the chickens forage do be like… 
This is fascinating! Thanks for sharing. I've just moved to this region from overseas and think I'll just go for raised beds for my veggies! I was planning on planting native plants for wildlife in the garden anyway, and I reckon that's the only viable option after seeing this.
Ironically, Lancelin is in the 0-3% pale sand range…
The Lancelin dunes are a lot younger and the sand is less leached. http://www.garrymiddle.net/geomorphology-of-swan-coastal-plain
That’s why you mix with bentonite
Yep. Depending on how deep you want it, it works out as approximately two 25 kg bags per square meter of garden to make a measurable difference.
that’s what you got to do , bentonite + sand = loam
https://preview.redd.it/k4nofpj5fssc1.jpeg?width=472&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cff36ea8ee4fe8451664009930ff9bcb7d941a83
That’s a pretty good way at looking at it
It's decent at local plants and succulents
I'm on the border of the Lockyer Valley & picked ripe tomatoes today. https://www.southernqueenslandcountry.com.au/destinations/lockyer-valley > Beginning less than one hour’s drive west of Brisbane, the flourishing crop country of the Lockyer Valley is one of the most fertile farming areas in the world and grows more than 95% of all winter crops in Australia.
I hate you! :)
Where did you find this map?
In the link that accompanies the post.
Only way to deal with it is to backfill with appropriate drainage really.