Oily Soils

The treatment of so called Oily Soils.

The reason for the "oily" characteristic of these soils is, that the bacteria in these oily soils are dead.

Bacteria normally occur in their millions in good garden soil and are a normal and a vital part of the ecological system.

In "oily" soils, the dead bodies of these bacteria pack closely together and are responsible for water failing to penetrate through the soils when water is poured onto the surface.

The reasons the bacteria die in the first place are too many to go into here.

As well as there being no living bacteria in these soils, the dead ones occupy the "pore space".

Pore space is that part in a good soil, what normally is occupied by air and water and although minute in individual size, it can amount to as much as 50 % by volume in good fertile soils.

Thus once the reasons for oily soils are known, the remedy is simple. One must create pore space.

How to do this? Again the answer is reasonable straight forward.

Dig in bulky amounts of a good quality COMPOST MIX, which is fibrous and is based on decomposed straw, animal manures and wood fibers.

This is the best for these type of sandy / oily soils

Bacteria activity is maintained in the decomposing process as the fibers break down.

What else can you do to improve the situation?

Mulch your soil at every opportunity with COMPOST.

If you mulch the surface of your soil regularly with COMPOST it will encourage earthworms. Earthworms prefer to work the compost placed on the soil surface, rather than have this material mixed into the soil. The earthworms will in turn increase the pore space of your soil and therefore increase fertility.

NB: If starting and preparing a NEW garden or flower bed and want to dig in +/- 1 m3 compost over 30 to 40 m2 are we advise you use a good quality COMPOST MIX. Don’t use pine bark this is to acid for general use and takes too long to break down.

To give you some idea of how important bacteria are!

The average number of bacteria in an average fertile soil has been worked out to be 4000 million per 1 gram of soil, or (112.000 million per oz.)

The use of the unique plant and soil conditioner/catalyst PENAC " P " for plants and PENAC “K” for Compost has proven to be very successful, PENAC " P “ stimulates the development of beneficial aerobic (oxygen generating) bacteria and other microbes in the soil and around the plant, helping them to overcome the negative effects of pollution caused by chemicals and pesticides.

PENAC PRODUCTS are imported from Germany, and are made from organic crystals and are approved by all the recognized international authorities. PENAC is safe, non-toxic easy to use and very effective.