Manure, compost & fertilisers for new soil

Sweet soil (see our sweet soil service) solves one problem — salinity — and stops there. UAE ground, even once topped with clean sweet soil, is still typically sandy, fast-draining and alkaline, commonly sitting around pH 8–9, with very little of the organic matter and soil life that holds moisture and nutrients in a temperate garden. Left alone, that combination means nutrients wash straight through after every watering and roots have almost nothing to hold onto. Soil improvement is the one-off and ongoing work of building that missing fertility and structure back in — composted organic matter for structure and slow-release nutrition, and targeted amendments like gypsum or iron chelate for specific chemical problems a soil test uncovers.

Composted manure and compost#

Only well-rotted manure goes into a UAE garden bed — cow, sheep or chicken, always composted first. Fresh manure is too strong for most roots, can scorch new planting, often carries weed seed, and can pose a pathogen risk if it touches edible crops. As a general application guide, cow or sheep manure is a fairly mild fertiliser and is commonly applied at around 2–4 litres per m² of bed, dug into the top 10–15cm of soil; chicken manure is considerably stronger and is applied in smaller amounts, more often, rather than one heavy dose. Compost — general garden or green-waste compost — does a similar structural job with a gentler nutrient load, and is the safer default where you're not sure of a manure's maturity.

Feeding alkaline soil#

Most of a UAE garden's ongoing feeding, once it's established, comes from a slow-release NPK fertiliser worked in a couple of times a year rather than heavy, frequent feeding that mostly washes through sandy soil. The other common gap is iron: alkaline soil chemically locks up iron so plants can't take it up even when it's present, which shows as yellowing leaves with green veins (iron chlorosis) — common on hibiscus, citrus and other exotics grown in UAE beds. An iron chelate feed, applied to the soil or as a foliar spray, corrects this far more reliably than a general fertiliser, since it keeps the iron in a form alkaline soil can't immediately bind up.

Gypsum for sodic soil#

Salinity and sodicity are related but different problems. A sodic soil has too much sodium relative to calcium and magnesium on its clay particles, which makes it disperse and seal over when wet — water and roots struggle to get through even after the soil has been leached of salt. Gypsum (calcium sulfate) treats this specifically: the calcium it supplies displaces sodium in the soil, which can then be leached away by irrigation, improving structure and drainage. General soil-science guidance — not UAE-specific, but the chemistry is the same everywhere — sets application rates by how sodic the soil is: roughly 2–5 tonnes per hectare (about 0.2–0.5 kg/m²) for moderately sodic soil, rising to 5 tonnes per hectare or more for badly affected ground. Get a proper soil test (exchangeable sodium percentage, or ESP) before applying gypsum at scale — it isn't a general-purpose fix for compacted or poorly draining soil, and applying it without a test can waste money on ground that doesn't actually need it.

Handling it safely#

Compost and well-rotted manure are safe to handle with basic hygiene — gloves, and washing hands afterwards. Keep any manure that isn't fully composted away from edible crops and harvest areas, and give a fresh application a proper composting period, not just a few weeks, before it goes near food plants like tomatoes or herbs.