The 3 types of Soil – Which One Is Best?

Welcome 

Hello and welcome to the Homesteading Kid. Today I will be talking about soil makeup and no it isn’t real makeup like lipstick type thing it is actually whether the soil is clay, sand or peat soil type.

What is the best soil for farming? 

You might say it depends on what you’re growing well not really the best soil ever is a well-drained peat bog well peat soil you don’t need any manure or fertilisers because guess what peat is fertiliser or manure. If you are lucky enough to get your hands on some of it and you can manage to drain it well you’ve got yourself a perfect soil unfortunately peat bogs aren’t that common so it’s not like you get it very often, also peat bogs are often conservation areas so you will have to remember that legal stuff.

How is Peat Formed

How do you form peat well that’s very hard because well most of it formed during the time of Noah’s flood and maybe a few other localised floods as well. Peat is vegetation that is being decomposed without air while under a lot of pressure from water. So yeah very hard to recreate.

Clay soil is it good for farming or not?

Soil is light to heavy. Heavy soil is more the clay end of the spectrum. If you know how to use it then you can grow pretty much anything in clay soil as it can be quite fertile Clay if it’s worked when wet compacts if you know how to work with clay it could be all right but if but you can’t work it when it’s wet unfortunately this is the bulk of English soil so you probably shouldn’t work English soil when it rains whereas Spanish soil is sandier and at the opposite end of the spectrum and we’ll get onto that next. 

Sandy soil is it beach or not? 

Yes, it is almost like a beach but you’re not going to do much farming on your beach that’s for sure. For farming you need something a less sandy than a beach with a little more other stuff mixed in of course there is some stuff that grow well in sand but I don’t think we can eat many of those so you’re going to need to add organic matter to this one. Sand loses or leaches nutrients very quickly so you have to not use liquid fertiliser because it’ll be gone the instant you put it on and if you really do have a beach then you will need a lot of organic matter like manure or compost. 

Where do you get organic matter? 

Some farmers give their manure away or sell it cheap to get rid of it, their loss is your gain. Manure is very rich in nutrients just before you put it on growing crops you have to let it age a bit so it doesn’t burn your crops (if you have rabbit manure you don’t need to do this but with any other manure you do). 

Loam 

Loam is quite common and easy to recreate if you don’t use chemicals and put on quite a lot of organic matter it is not waterlogged nor parched it is just in the middle of the spectrum and you can convert any soil into loam with a lot of organic matter. It is good for farming and you can grow everything that climate allows. Just keep applying the organic matter. 

Ending 

That has covered pretty much all the soil types and how to get organic matter so that is all we can do. And I hope you learnt something about soil makeup from that. You can also make compost at home so I will be putting some links to help you with composting. Anyway, bye for now and see you soon. JK 

Helpful Links About Composting

Getting Started With Composting

Other Suggested Reading