Soil is the lifeblood of any garden, providing warmth, moisture, and nutrients for plants. But did you know that not all soil is the same? There are six main soil types in the UK, each with unique qualities and quirks. This guide will help you to identify, enhance, and plant harmoniously with the soil you have, ensuring healthy, successful, and productive plants for years to come.

The best way to get to grips with your soil is by getting a grip of your soil! Your hands are fantastic, tactile tools for identifying soil. Rubbing it between your fingers will give you a pretty good idea of what you’re working with.

Chalk

Chalky soil will feel dry, with large, dusty, particles. Its free-draining so isn’t prone to becoming waterlogged or compacted but will lose nutrients and moisture easily. Adding fertiliser and organic matter like mulch will replenish nutrients and retain water. Chalk soils are alkaline, which can stunt growth and cause leaves to yellow. Balance the pH by adding, nitrogen, sulphur, or sphagnum. Rosemary, Thyme, Lavender, and Lilac are all chalky soil lovers, but avoid lime-hating ericaceous plants.

Clay

Clay soil will feel heavy, moist, and slimy, and hold its shape when rolled into a ball. It warms up quickly during the spring and retains heat, but often becomes very dry and cracked during the peak of summer. In wet and cold weather, it is prone to becoming waterlogged and compacted. Avoid treading on clay soil wherever possible. Clay soil is very fertile, so won’t need much enrichment. Instead, focus on improving the structure by adding gypsum, coarse grit, or bark to aerate the soil and aid drainage. Roses flourish in clay soil, as do summer fruits and hardy perennials.

Peat

Peat soil is dark coloured and slightly spongy to touch. Although it contains plenty of organic matter, its acidity stifles nutrients, so regular fertilisation is needed. Peat soils heat up quickly in spring and retain moisture well, but can become waterlogged, so consider digging drainage channels or adding gravel. Heathers, Camellias, and ericaceous plants such as Azalea will flourish in acidic peat soil. Alternatively, you can add lime to reduce the acidity.

Sand

Sandy soil feels gritty and crumbles easily. It is often acidic, and its loose structure means it loses nutrients and moisture easily, so add plenty of wet organic matter like compost, sphagnum moss, or manure. Slow-release fertilisers are great for loose sandy soils. Opt for drought-tolerant or semi-exotic plants like Buddleja, Lavender, and succulents.

Silt

Silty soils feel light, soft, and almost soapy in your hands. Despite being free draining, they retain nutrients well, but can become easily compacted. Adding loose organic matter will improve aeration. Most vegetables are well suited to silty soil, as well as trees like Willow and Birch.

Loam

Loamy soil has a fine but moist texture that holds its shape when rolled into a ball. If you have loam soil, consider yourself blessed! It’s the easiest soil to work with, not too loose or too dense, usually nutrient-rich, and warms up quickly in spring. Loamy soil will support almost every type of plant with minimal intervention. A little additional compost in spring and the occasional feed during the peak of the growing season should be sufficient to keep your plants contented in a loamy border.

References 

Barton, R. (no date). Know Your Garden Soil: How to Make the Most of Your Soil Type. Available at: https://learn.eartheasy.com/articles/know-your-garden-soil-how-to-make-the-most-of-your-soil-type/#:~:text=Great%20for%3A%20Shrubs%2C%20climbers%2C,which%20have%20adequate%20adequate%20drainage.

BBC. (2014). Soil Types. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/htbg/module1/soil_types1.shtml 

Chen, A. (2021) 8 Common Soil Problems (And How to Fix Them). Available at: https://defiel.com/common-soil-problems/

Gardeners World. (2019). Find out your soil type. Available at: https://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/find-out-your-soil-type/#:~:text=There%20are%20six%20main%20types,%2C%20peaty%2C%20sandy%20and%20silty

Gardeners World. (2019). Best plants for alkaline soils. Available at: https://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/best-plants-for-alkaline-soils/

Gardeners World. (2019). 10 flowers for clay soil. Available at: https://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/10-flowering-plants-for-clay-soil/

Gardeners World. (2019). Plants for light and stony soil. Available at: https://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/plants-for-light-and-stony-soil/

Hayes, B. (no date). 6 Types of Soil and Which Plants Grow Best on Them. Available at: https://morningchores.com/types-of-soil/

Residential Plantings. (No date). Common Soil Problems and Solutions. Available at: https://residentialplantings.com/tips/common-soil-problems/

RHS. (no date). Soil types. Available at: https://www.rhs.org.uk/soil-composts-mulches/soil-types

One of the fundamental rules of successful gardening is that to have a healthy, thriving garden, a good place to start has decent soil to grow.

By ‘decent’, we mean soil that drains well but still retains some moisture; is nutritious enough to encourage healthy growth and remains friable – making planting, digging, levelling and raking easy; providing an ideal environment for root growth. It sounds like a tall order.

Loams are an ideal mixture of silt, clay and sand. We mean roughly up to a third clay, another third sand, and the rest silt by ideal. It’s not a precise science, and the results can depend on what is already there.

But by planting into loam, you get a fertile, well-drained and workable soil mix.

How can you tell if that’s what you’ve got in your garden? On a dry day, grab a handful of soil and squeeze it gently. Ideally, you don’t want the makings of a mud pie here.

In contrast, neither do you want the soil to flow between your fingers like you’re on the beach. If this happens, you’ve got too much sand, meaning moisture and nutrients will soak away before roots have had a chance to absorb them.

An ideal consistency would be a softball of soil that you can easily crumble away. The sand aids drainage while the clay retains moisture; the silt is like a bonding agent for the two.

The perfect combination will result in a pH-neutral soil, which means a pH level of 7, so neither excessively acidic (ericaceous) or alkaline, giving you more comprehensive options for what you can successfully grow.

Unfortunately, few gardens are like this from scratch, especially if you have a new build property.

To achieve an excellent loamy consistency, you need to be a dedicated gardener and gradually introduce organic matter over several years. But being a longer-term solution, it can be frustrating if eventually, you don’t achieve the desired results, despite doing everything right.

Experimenting and changing the blend consistently if you’ve already planted your beds and borders can be challenging too.

We can tell you’re ahead of us at this stage. What’s the easy way to get a loamy mix in your garden?

You could try Chargrace Soils Planting Loam, which you can introduce to your garden. It is available in various quantities, either loose or bagged. You don’t necessarily need to do it all at the same time, obviously, if you are improving the soil in a new-build garden, you need to do the whole thing as a project, but with an established garden, you may wish to consider a plan to introduce loam in stages.

You can calculate how much you’ll need by using Google Maps ‘measure distance’ facility. Zoom into your garden and right-click where you want to measure from. Then click at each point around the plot you measure until you get back to the starting point. You will then have the linear and square meterage of your plot. Multiply the square meterage by the depth you need.

By introducing Chargrace Planting Loam to your garden, the roots of your plants will get the very best of everything they need; nutrients, gaps between the loamy particles to seek out moisture and sand to allow aeration and prevent stagnation can lead to disease.

Available with a range of delivery options, including tonne bags unloaded by Hiab and bulk tippers, call our sales team on 01342 893174 or email info@dev.solutionsfinder.co.uk to find out how we can assist with your garden project.

Spring is an excellent time of year to be thinking about renovating or improving your lawn, whether it’s beautifully laid out and mowed with perfect stripes or perhaps used as an impromptu football pitch or bicycle racetrack.

Either way, most lawns require some TLC sooner or later, and top dressing with Chargrace 10mm Rootzone will increase resistance to weeds and aid drainage. 

Laden with nutrients, Chargrace Rootzone is perfect for filling in small hollows and depressions. The sandy elements will improve drainage and allow the root structure of your lawn to become event better established.

Suitable for almost all types of turf and grass cultivars, continued use of Chargrace Rootzone will improve the health of your lawn year on year. 

For overseeding, which will thicken and establish the sward, spring and autumn are the best times; you may wish to treat or remove any weed before solid tining the grass or carrying out heavy scarification.

Depending on the size of your lawn, you can do the former manually with a square tined fork (make sure there are no electrical cables below the surface first!) and the latter with a decent spring rake, which will also help you save on your gym fees, as it will be quite the workout.

For the more extensive lawn, we would recommend a machine; these can quickly be hired from your local hire shop but do check that the tines are in good condition before use and try to plan the work for a decent spell of weather, which along with the lawn needs to be dry for this work to be carried out.

Once you have either aerated or scarified your lawn, you may wish to over seed, which will thicken the sward where it may have become thin or even bald. To work out how much seed you would need, you can look for your lawn on Google Maps, zoom in as close as you can without losing definition, pick a point from which you wish to start measuring (on the perimeter of the lawn) right click and choose ‘measure distance’.

 Depending on its use, you may wish to do some research into which seed mix would be best for your lawn. If there is heavy traffic from children and /or dogs, you may wish to go for a hardwearing mix of dwarf ryegrass and creeping red fescue. 

For shadier lawns, choose a smooth-stalked meadowgrass and a resilient blend of bluegrass. 

If your lawn gets light traffic and needs to look super lush, a mix of bents and fescues could be what you’re looking for. There are hundreds of blends available to suit your particular lawn.  

You may wish to order a bit extra seed for any minor repairs. If you do, keep it in your shed inside a biscuit tin – this will deter rodents; they can smell it from miles away.   

Put the grass seed in a bucket and spread thinly by hand, walking up and down in rows, first one way, then across ways, and keep going until all the grass seed is gone. If you have a spreader, that’s even better.

Once the grass seed is spread, have a cup of tea and sit down for ten minutes. It’s time now to start top dressing your lawn.

Once again, if you have a spreader, use it. Again, work up and down in rows, and then across ways, keep going until all the Chargrace Rootzone is gone.  

You will now need to level it out; you can use a drag mat, a lute (an angle iron frame on a handle) or even the back of a wide rake. Keep working the Chargrace Rootzone in until any depressions have been filled in, and you can manly see blades of grass across the lawn. 

You cannot overdo this stage; the more you rake or drag-mat the lawn, the better it will be.

Once you are satisfied that the lawn has now been completely top-dressed, water it thoroughly or hope for rain. You will soon see an improvement.