Has anyone mixed various media to make a veggie garden soil?

I'm hoping to find a mix that best holds water.

What materials are you using?

What ratios?

I'm in Samut Songkhram where everywhere is red rocky dirt or amazingly sticky black rice field clay.

Thanks!

.....meaning that you have a sandy soil?  Any recipes involving organic materials aren't going to work long time in Thailand, Back home I saw Bentonite clay being recommended for sandy soils, but I would be cautious about that, even if you can find it here. Pond supplies possibly. Clay soil: this is my problem, I added sand on the surface every year until I got it where I wanted it. Use siliceous sand (acidic) and not calcareous sand, which cakes. I didn't dig it in, I just scattered it on the surface and it worked itself in.

2 hours ago, cooked said:

.....meaning that you have a sandy soil?  Any recipes involving organic materials aren't going to work long time in Thailand, Back home I saw Bentonite clay being recommended for sandy soils, but I would be cautious about that, even if you can find it here. Pond supplies possibly. Clay soil: this is my problem, I added sand on the surface every year until I got it where I wanted it. Use siliceous sand (acidic) and not calcareous sand, which cakes. I didn't dig it in, I just scattered it on the surface and it worked itself in.

Thanks, I forgot about the different types of sand. Could make the soil even worse than it is.

 

Our area is known for two things: coconut trees and back filling land with rocky red colored dirt or black/gray clay from rice paddies. My land has about 30 cm of red rocky dirt dumped on top of another 30 cm of black/gray very sticky rice paddy clay.

 

I plan mixing a new layer of good soil into what I have. I'm not sure what to buy to amend. Rice husks, rice char, coconut coir and other organics. I think you're right about organics because too much will not hold water for very long. I know some types of clay begin as a sticky mess but later break up into almost a loamy consistency.  

 

I think I need to investigate available clay types in LOS. Check out some areas where rice paddy clay has become after sitting in the weather for a year.

 

Thanks for your help!

Are you planning your veggie garden for "in the ground" and you want to amend the "red rocky dirt or amazingly sticky black rice field clay"? 

Or are you planning to use raised beds or containers and you want to create an ideal soil mixture for 100% of the volume?

And how many square meters do you want to plant. This all makes a difference in choice of materials, transportation and costs. 

 

Samut Songkhram is not that far from Nakhon Pathom and the home of Best Garden State (on FB and LINE I think), Swedish expat managed and a major supplier of organic program soil amendments and fertilizer materials, sacks or truck loads. And they provide state of the art soil testing and Rx amendments. (I have used their vermicompost, bonemeal, azomite, humates, bat guano and and other products for my own garden and for potting and fertilizer mixes). And also not far from you, in Samut Prakan we have Organic Totto and their excellent bokashi COF (complete organic fertilizer) and EM (effective microorganisms) (their excellent EM is now available at HomePro).

 

For an ideal raised bed or container soil, recommendations often start with 1/3 each, clay loam, fine sand, and composted organic matter (dairy compost, vermicompost, peat moss). And then add specialty ingredients like pumice to improve soil moisture retention, and/or bentonite clay to improve nutrient holding capacity. Yes, unstable organic matter will decomp rather rapidly in a tropical climate, it's hard to maintain the ideal 3% or more SOM (soil organic matter) for the beneficial soil biology to thrive and facilitate nutrient cycling, but the SOM is an important factor for plant health, natural resistance to pests and diseases, and nutrient density in the food you eat. And SOM can be maintained to some extent by mulching; or replenished annually if you double dig, like with the Grow Biointensive method; or if you cover crop, as with Regenerative Ag practices. Coconut, rice hulls, and rice straw are available inexpensive mulching materials. 

I hope that helps, Don.

 

 

 

Drtreelove, thanks! Your info more than helps in so many ways. Appreciate it!

For you and others who may be interested in my two satang, and you are committed to raising your own high quality food for personal and family health, food which will have far more nutritional and energetic value than anything you can get elsewhere --

 

If you are planting 'in the ground' and amending native soil, and you are planning a sizeable garden, then consider putting a little money out for soil analysis, interpretation of the soil test results, and prescription amendments, to start off right with basic mineralization. Purchase the recommended soil minerals and add biologicals, dairy-cow compost, vermicompost (worm castings), and composted poultry manure have, or should have if managed intelligently, an alive and active microbiome which is an important starter for soil and plant health. (This is "probiotics" for plants)  A good EM, like that from Organic Totto, is primarily a highly charged biological soup with an engineered specific organisms mix, which is used as an inoculant,  EM, (along  with the biology in the composted manure, and the biology already present in the native soil),  acts as a "biodigester" which acts on organic matter and to some extent on the mineral soil.  This helps to build and activate the all-important soil-food-web and to prepare for nutrient cycling in your plantings. Personally, I also forage healthy aggregate (crumb) structured soil from un-disturbed, un-developed, un-farmed natural forest, for use as a soil biology inoculant, especially for sites with depleted, over farmed, or new construction sites with < 1% SOM subsurface fill dirt. 

 

Complete weeding and grading operations. Delay planting for at least a couple of weeks while watering and controlling weed emergence.  Get your tools and materials in place. Prepare to incorporate (dig-in or roto-till) the Rx minerals along with the biologicals, to a depth of 25cm (6 inches) or more. Ideally let the planting beds lay fallow and water for a couple of weeks, to settle and activate the biochemistry.  This time of year, consider seeding a mixed species cover crop (green manure) for over-wintering soil building. 

 

It all comes together once you've planted and dedicated to good soil and water management. 

 

One alternative is strictly "no-tillage" where you don't dig in or rototill the amendments, but everything is restricted to soil surface applications, or preferrably cover cropping and/or mulching.  A primary point of no-till, is not interupting the active soil , soil structure, and established mycorrhizal fungal-root networks. This is important for established plantings and trees, but I find that limited tillage/digging/grading/incorporating is useful for a new garden or lawn for initial soil preparation and planting, in order to get a faster start at soil buiding. You can phase into no-till or limited tillage (infrequent only as needed,)

 

Note: high NPK, high salt-index chemical fertilizers are so "last century", and may jack green growth, flowering and crop production, but are detrimental for the environment, long term soil and plant health, and the natural resistance of plants to pests and diseases.  Anybody, like myself, whose primary education and experience happened 10 - 20 years ago or more, has a lot of catching up to do with modern soil and plant science, exciting new and emerging science coming out of the Soil Food Web School, Kiss The Ground and Regenerative Agriculture movement. 

If only people would apply their energy to developing the base (local land) for growing food, stomachs would be full, people satisfied and the need to conquer might be reduced.

 

If one could implement the info you've given, a legacy garden would be handed down generations to come.

 

I'm prepping the ground now, spending more time to build a viable growing medium so I can plant and eat rather than performing emergency intervention to save sickly plants. 

 

Sage advice. Thanks again!