Hi Paul,

Your soil sounds pretty enviable already! Does it drain ok, while still holding sufficient moisture? What zone are you and what are your summers like (hot and dry like mine, or generally moderate like New England?)

Kris (who lends out her battered old copy of SFG out to all her gardening friends)

Thanks Kris! Hot and damp, I'm along the shoreline, probably zone 6b, though it seems to depend on what map I am looking at....

Hot and damp, I'm along the shoreline, probably zone 6b,

I used to garden in Niantic, right at the beach - very sandy, and slow to warm up in the summer, although the growing season lasted much later into the fall than it did inland. The early summer is still good for cool-weather crops but if you are desperate for tomatoes or squash it can be hard to take.

The big difference in the new book is that it recommends gardening up instead of down - that is, building raised beds in boxes and filling them with new material instead of digging and improving the soil. This is what I'm doing (at a new home in the Finger Lakes region of NY) but I can't see any reason to switch to it if you know and can work with the original way.

Hi okmoreh, Niantic is just up 95 from me, I am in Clinton. That sea breeze sure is good at cooling things off in the summer, but you're right, it seems to extend the early spring. No tomatoes until 5/15 for me! Thanks for your explanation of the new book, maybe I'll try that someday, but not this year.

Other than peat moss you've got Mel's Mix pretty much down pat. Yeah you've got sand, but if it works for you. Use it. My soil was so hard packed from years of neglect and sun baking that I just built over it with Mel's Mix. Best of luck and enjoy your garden!

Here is a link that might be useful: Sinfonian's garden adventure!

That sounds very good. Several of my beds are just several inches of compost over existing sand that has mixed as the years have gone with the help of the worms and the disturbance of pulling up spent plants. With that much compost, I'd skip adding fertilizer at planting, perhaps save some to supplement the more draining plants later in the growing season (e.g. tomatoes)

Thank you folks. Yes, I have a lot of sand. I replaced the septic system here, and when they dug their test pit I learned that most of my yard is one foot of good soil on top of at least ten feet of sand. Apparently the whole neighborhood was a tomato farm for many years before being developed in the 1950s.

But this particular plot is right next to the house, and since it is (was) mostly sand all the way to the top I suspect this is just the backfill from when they finished the foundation. So I imagine I'll have zero problem with drainage, but may have problems with retention. If I do I think I'll just water a little more heavily this year and add some peat in the fall and work it in, thank you for that.

Also thank you for the advice on holding off on more fertilizer just yet. I think I'll wait at least a month to see how things are growing.

Thanks again!
Paul