same for me, dude. You spend a lot of time with the hose in your hand in sand.

I read this thinking, "Surely they are not going to say they prefer sandy soil to clay?!"

Yes, same here. Sandy soil sucks down the contents of all your compost piles, licks its lips, and asks, "What? No Seven-layer dip?"

Had clay for the last zillion years! Built raised beds cause there was only a 2 week window to dig! Then ROCK hard!

I planted a fuji apple tree in the yard. Year 1 and 2 were fine.....year 3 it died. When we dug it out we found that the roots couldn't penetrate the clay soil!

I've now moved into town where the soil is supposed to be fantastic (Luther Burbank stompings!) We'll see what we get! Nancy

Nancy, I have gardened in CA adobe soil. Discounting for the moment the horrible gopher problems, that soil will meet its match in daikon radish (tillage radish). And it will stay softer afterwards.

Actually, there are some plants I'm looking forward to trying on this sandy property. Stuff like gladiolus (and bulbs in general), dianthus, lavender, and lupines that don't do well in clay soil. There are some flowers that seem to thrive in sand, but pretty much everything else seems to hate it. For those of you who garden in sandy soil, what do you add to it?

tulips and daffodils for starters. They die off when the soil becomes seriously dry in June. Allium too. Iris made it and multiplied, and asian lilies are capable of surviviving there. daylilies do well.

Loam is wasted on people who don't know how good they have it! You'd think the universe would reward us gardeners with some nice soil now and then. OTOH, we're the ones who know how to deal with it. Much will be asked of those to whom much is given.

I have two gardens one is sandy loam (more sand than loam) and one is heavy grayish green Colorado clay. Tomatoes always do poor in the sand though most other things do well. Last year was the last for attempting tomatoes in the sandy soil. Peppers, carrots and onions seem to do quite nice. Over the years I've been making hugelkultur beds in the sand and those have done really well however it is a lot of work. The main problem I've had with the heavy clay soil is consistent seed germination. Hopefully that gets better as the soil gets better.

I’m so glad (for a change) to not be reading about evil clay.

Is there actually any place on Earth that naturally has loam soil?

Deanna

I started with silt loam and some silty clay loam in the lower corners. It is good soil but without extra organic matter, it will crust some.

I have heavily amended with sand, local peat moss, horse manure with a lot of hay in it, mulched leaves, and leaf compost...ergo, dream soil.

The other day my onion plants came in the mail. I went out and planted them in the nicest loamy and mealy soil you could hope for.

For early crops of onions and sweet corn, it helps to ridge those rows in the fall before to make the soil warmer and dryer.

There is nothing wrong with clay soil that adding lots of organic matter to it would not make it better.

There is nothing wrong with sandy soils that adding lots of organic matter to it would not make it better.

Something to keep in mind is that it takes about 10 tons per acre of organic material to raise the level of organic matter in soil 1 percent.

Is there actually any place on Earth that naturally has loam soil?

My kinfolk in northeast Arkansas garden on sandy loam that is so close to perfect they can grow strawberries without raised beds or amendments. As you would expect, they attribute their success more to their green thumbs than to their ideal soil. I don't have the heart to tell them, "If not for that earthquake in 1811, you'd be struggling with poor soil just like the rest of us."

There are places in middle Michigan, northern to central Indiana, and a few other places scattered around the world that have good quality loam soils. However, even in those places if organic matter is not added regularly that good soil will become bad soil.

The CA central valley has two feet of loam. There is a cement hardpan under that, though. I experienced total soil change with just a move across town this past fall, actually. Both my parents' place in Angels Camp and my old place in nearby San Andreas have that really red clay soil very common in the Sierra Foothills. My parents in particular are on top of a pretty tall mountain, so their soil is hard and very difficult. I remember having to dig a hole for my mom to plant something when I was a kid and it just took forever. You needed a pick to even break the surface. My old place wasn't on a hill but it was on top of a natural spring, and so I had boggy clay soil mixed with snails. Lovely during the terrible drought we had though. This last December, we moved about 10 miles away (from both my parents and my old place) into an 8-acre parcel with an extremely high water table and a large creek in the back. This new place sits in a valley that apparently provided much of the vegetable needs for Angels Camp and the surrounding mining towns during the Gold Rush. My new-to-me house used to be a large barn situated on top of a 900sq ft cellar made of rhyolite with 12 ft ceilings. Apparently they used to store all the wine and root veggies in there. Anyway, even though gardening is my number one hobby, I didn't even think about the soil until after we completed the purchase. Although the height of the white oaks in the yard should have given me some kind of clue, I guess. The first thing that struck me as odd was that my dog wouldn't stop digging these huge 2 or 3 feet deep holes in the yard. She had never been a digger, and it seemed really odd. Why is she digging these enormous holes? The answer is simple: because she can. A few weeks later we went to put up a fence around my new garden, and I braced myself for the usual hour or two of work digging holes. Instead, the shovel slides into the ground like butter. My 8 year old can dig a 2 foot hole for me in under three minutes. The soil is dark, dark black and fluffy. I've never seen anything like it. I nearly fell to the ground to thank God for my good fortune.

Is there actually any place on Earth that naturally has loam soil?

As frontporchfarm mentioned, many areas in Calif's central valley have nearly perfect soil. I was driving through the area around Bakersfield a couple years ago during late summer/early fall, around harvest time for many crops. I stopped the car in an area where there was a mixture of orchards and row crops. They were digging a 3-4 foot trench along the edge of a nut orchard and the soil was light brown and crumbly all the way to the bottom of the trench. I could barely believe it because, although I've lived in Calif my whole life, I've always gardened on soil where there was a dense layer of clay about 1-2 feet from the surface.

The USDA has mapped and classified nearly all the soils in the country, so I think you can find out where all the best soils are located. Still, it's different when you can see it right in front of your eyes.