How To Build Bad Soil In a Dry Land
Desert Soil: Oxymoron?
Those two words seem like opposites when you think about it. A desert doesn’t have soil really, does it? Living in a dry 
climate doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in the desert. Your home could be situated in a semi-arid “Mediterranean” zone that gets far less water than many places but still supports a variety of plants. Whatever the ground is composed of, that’s your growing medium. I firmly believe most “soils” can be recovered, but you may be starting with more of a dirt than a soil. And that’s okay. If your goal is to create or improve a landscape with little rainfall (clouds occasionally hovering but not always releasing their magic for the ground to soak up), you can focus on improving your soil’s capacity to hold what water does fall onto it. This is one step toward moving it up the scale in terms of how well it will grow plants.
I recently tried to find information about how specifically to improve a special type of clay soil but didn’t find much at all. Most people familiar with what I was looking for were adding it to their existing non-clay soil. I wanted to know what to add to it in the case where a property’s soil was made of it. The soil type in question? Bentonite.
