Sandy soil

 The organic matter in a cycle.

The Dutch soils are divided (roughly) into clay and sandy soil. Sand is characterized as a (admittedly) rock dust, but it has no structure from which a plant can get nutrition. What remains then is the organic matter, which contains minerals.

There is a high mineral exchange in clay between plants and clay, because the bacterial life, using the organic matter present as an energy source, to decompose the mineral.

In sandy soil this exchange takes place much less, because the mineral content is much smaller, and only takes place between the minerals in the organic matter, and not between the sand.

Sand cannot be broken down by bacterial life.

Rock dust, on the other hand, consists of 47 (now known) different minerals, and as an example Dr. Inge Inham that e.g. arsenic, which we need to build up our nerves, is present in the rock dust, but as a very small part. But through the plant it still ends up in our body, and that's how our body is built, during the time that the fetus grows to adulthood.

To return to the sandy soil, in sandy soil there is a rotation of a lot of organic matter, but that does not make the soil richer in minerals, because the addition of organic matter does take place, but no addition of minerals, only through leaf litter to use, no or hardly any minerals will be added than there are already. It is pumping organic matter around. And to cite an example:

Peat, the substrate that is widely used in horticulture, has a growth habit that as a plant grows, it extracts the minerals from the plant that has already been digested in previous years. The mineral stock goes up with it, and the organic matter remains behind and acidifies under water to peat. To make the same peat suitable as a growing medium, lime is added to it to raise the pH, so that plants can grow in it, and often also fertilizers.

Back to sandy soil, the same happens in sandy soil, so organic matter is added to the soil, whether or not via a composting method. Because there is no water level, the oxygen can freely enter the soil and there is no acidificaíon. In order to introduce minerals into the ground, one would therefore have to bring rock dust into the ground, from a country where rock dust is readily available, viz. Portugal.

The concept of mineral-organic matter composting can be read extensively on our blog, but we hadn't got around to the concept of 'sandy soil'' and the poverty of sandy soil, of minerals, yet. So with this one.

Hendrik.