josko, sandy soil. I've never worked with sandy soil. What I have in Idaho is clay soil. I like the clay - enough OM and it becomes something beautiful.

I think I'd be looking for a source of slit to add to the sand, and, if possible, top-dress with some clay. But if you're satisfied with the basic makeup of the mineral part of the soil, I suspect you'll need/want potassium/potash. If you can round up some leaves and get them shredded, that would be good.

And planting something for the winter is another good idea. Keeps the soil alive.

I double dug a lot of my garden beds. I've been adding a humic shale ore amendment, and some super triple phosphate to the subsoil. I finished the top layer of topsoil with organic lawn food that was relatively even in analysis, something like 10-10-10 or similar. The tomatoes did well with that combo, but, again, I have clay.

I'd be tempted to start using small wood chips, partially composted, as one of the components of the mulch on your beds. Or sawdust. Don't dig it in, let it lie on the surface.

Jeepers, I'm writing a book.

I try to go to a no-till regime after I've gotten a bed prepared, or at least avoid tilling OM into the soil and just let the OM be on top of the soil. All my plants do better that way. I use lots of fresh grass clippings and wheat straw as a mulch.

I'm aiming for 8" of mulch, but it's been breaking down faster than I can apply it, so I'm running closer to 3". I say, 'try for no-till' because when I plant potatoes, I dig trenches and that results in the soil being tilled. But the corn, onions, tomatoes, melons all just got stuck into the ground and then heavily mulched. It worked.

I think your sandy soil would benefit from this kind of deep mulch approach - protects and fosters the O layer.

- Paul

Add the compost and maybe the eelgrass now and seed the winter rye and then in the spring use those wood chips as a mulch, not a soil amendment.
What is the humus level of your soil now?
When was the last time you had a good, reliable soil test done?
What does your soil smell like?
What is the tilth like?
What kind of life is in the soil?

Thanks folks, much appreciated.

Yes, our soil on Cape Cod is sandy. Think beach. :( I double-dug ~500 sq ft a few years back, and had ~6~ of nice black loam on top, but sand with gravel and rocks below. I took off the topsoil, removed as much 'subsoil' and rocks as I could, then I put on ~1 yard of compost, 2 (3.8') bales of peat, 1/2 yd of fine wood chips, couple large bags of shredded paper and 1 yd of eelgrass per 100 sq ft, mixed it with the subsoil as best as I could, probably to a total depth of 20" or so, and then replaced the removed topsoil, mixed in with another yard of compost. I had 5 yds of compost I made from fish scrap and wood chips, and I bought 6 yds of compost off a local farm (made of lawn clippings and leaves). I put on ~6" of eelgrass in the fall and spaded it all in come springtime. I measured a Ph of 4.8, so I added about 5 gals of wood ashes/100 sq ft over the winter,
Stuff grew pretty well last summer: if anything, it seemed a little nitrogen-heavy because, well, I got a lot of greens from tomatoes, peppers etc. and not a whole lot of fruit. Each yard of my compost started with ~150 lbs of fish scrap in it, so I'd guess that spiked up the nitrogen.

It's not easy to find silt or clay hereabouts, but I can get decent leaf/grass compost for $22/yd delivered, eelgrass is convenient and free for the picking, and I've got 'bout 8-10 yds of my fish scrap compost ready to go. We burn about 4 cords/year, so I've got wood ashes from that, too.

Here are the answers to Kimmsr's questions:
What is the humus level of your soil now? I think it's pretty much what I put into it two years ago, plus all the eelgrass I was using for mulch all last summer.

When was the last time you had a good, reliable soil test done? Never - I know, I ought to do it.

What does your soil smell like? I wouldn't say it has a strong, or even memorable smell. Maybe it smells a little like, well, soil, but one could say it doesn't smell like much of anything.

What is the tilth like?
It's very easy to work. One really can't get it to form clods, even after an inch of rain. It'll get softer when wet, of course, but I've bveen able to spade even very wet soil and have it all break apart on the spade.
It's pretty consistent, structure wise, for about 18" down.

What kind of life is in the soil? I have a pretty good worm population, both large brownish earthworms and smaller red ones. I also seem to have a lot of milipedes or centipedes, about an inch long.

I'm glad to find this post. We just got a beach house at the Jersey shore. There is a strip of land between my house and my neighbor's house that I would like to grow food in. It is mostly sand about 18" down. It was once covered with little pebbles as mulch. The pebbles are mixed in with the sand now. I was thinking of digging down 6 inches and piling on a foot of wood chip now in hopes of having soil there in the spring. Any suggestions?

I thought of bring home some of the sand that I keep having to sweep out of my driveway at the beach house, and bringing it to my home that has heavy clay soil. I read up on it. It seems it's not a good idea. The combination of clay and sand make a cement like mixture that is the worst of both worlds, not the best. They suggest adding organic matter in both cases instead.

Good soil will have a pleasant, rich earth odor and in the spring as that soil warms up it can be noticeable from quite a distance, something I seldom smell anywhere anymore and when I pick up a handful of many soils it smells chemically. Some years ago now one of the guys at church decided the largish pile of leaves that made a mulch on one of the planting beds at church should go and while he was raking up those leaves smelled something he had never smelled before and he did not know he was smelling good, rich earth, a pleasant odor. It took some time to convince him that was because of those leaves and that they should stay put.
These simple soil tests can help,
1) Structure. From that soil sample put enough of the rest to make a 4 inch level in a clear 1 quart jar, with a tight fitting lid. Fill that jar with water and replace the lid, tightly. Shake the jar vigorously and then let it stand for 24 hours. Your soil will settle out according to soil particle size and weight. For example, a good loam will have about 1-3/4 inch (about 45%) of sand on the bottom. about 1 inch (about 25%) of silt next, about 1 inch (25%) of clay above that, and about 1/4 inch (about 5%) of organic matter on the top.

2) Drainage. Dig a hole 1 foot square and 1 foot deep and fill that with water. After that water drains away refill the hole with more water and time how long it takes that to drain away. Anything less than 2 hours and your soil drains� too quickly and needs more organic matter to slow that drainage down. Anything over 6 hours and the soil drains too slowly and needs lots of organic matter to speed it up.

3) Tilth. Take a handful of your slightly damp soil and squeeze it tightly. When the pressure is released the soil should hold together in that clump, but when poked with a finger that clump should fall apart.

4) Smell. What does your soil smell like? A pleasant, rich earthy odor? Putrid, offensive, repugnant odor? The more organic matter in your soil the more active the soil bacteria will be and the nicer your soil will smell.

5) Life. How many earthworms per shovel full were there? 5 or more indicates a pretty healthy soil. Fewer than 5, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, indicates a soil that is not healthy.

and along with a good, reliable soil test from UMASS can guide you in what more you may need to do.