I guess since sorghum molasses isn't made from sugar cane, it isn't an option.

Sorghum molasses is fine. Any type of sugar is fine. All the sugar products feed the microbes that help organic matter break down. By feeding your microbes, you are stimulating biological activity in the soil, and that activity is of particular importance to anyone gardening organically because it is the microbes in the soil that break down organic matter into components that plant roots can take up and use.

I don't know about having it in fine shape, no one on this forum would want my old poor sandy soil. But I enjoy gardening in it and am surprised at what I can sometimes grow. How can you tell if there is to much microbial activity? I spread a lot of wood stove ash on it and as far as I can tell it hasn't hurt it as of yet, probably leaches out with rain. I planted pine trees on the north & south sides of the garden years ago and now have a steady flow of pine needles blow all over it, it has reached the point that I don't have to spread them any more as the trees are so tall that the needles just blow out of the trees and scatter across the garden. I'm fairly lazy anyway. I grow sweet corn, Bradley & Traveler tomatoes, Emerald okra, Bell peppers & Cheyenne & Jalapeno peppers, cowpeas, mustard & turnips, onions, watermelons (when I can bet the coyotes to them), pumpkins, Blue Lake green beans, sweet potatoes & Irish potatoes. Though I don't get the turn out that many of you growers on the forum get, I raise all we can use. I can & pickle what I am able and the rest goes into the freezer.

I really enjoy reading this forum and every thing everyone has to tell.

If you have too much microbial activity in your soil, then the compost and other forms of organic matter break down much too quickly and no matter how much you add, it never seems to help. That's one reason no-till growing is so useful as the lack of tilling of the soil enables organic matter to break down more slowly. When you plow or till the soil, it exposes your organic matter and microbes to more sunlight, heat and moisture, and that speeds up the rate at which the organic matter decomposes.

It sounds to me like you have your sandy soil in really great shape and can grow almost anything in it. When we were looking for land to buy in the mid-1990s, we almost bought a place with sugar sand but ultimately decided not to, and that's not something I ever regretted. As hard as it is to work with clay, at least the clay is highly fertile and all you have to do to improve it is to add tons of organic matter. Based on the gardens of friends I have here that have sandy soil (sugar sand or something similar to beach sand, not sandy loam), I think that the organic matter breaks down a lot more quickly in their sand than it does in my clay. They have a harder time with rainfall leaching out the nutrients than I do.

Sandy soil can be great for growing some things. In the parts of Love County that have sandy soil (and a lot of it is really fine sugar sand), there once was a huge watermelon and muskmelon industry. Most all the farms are gone now, or have converted to wheat or something else, but there's still a couple of folks in the Thackerville area still growing watermelons and Israel melons in that sand. There's also a pink eye purple hull pea farm that grows peas every summer in sandy soil, but they irrigate a lot (from a well, I presume) and grow in rotation with other crops. However, for folks who love to grow tomatoes, sandy soil is the devil since root knot nematodes thrive in it. I have friends with sandy soil who gave up gardening because fighting the nematodes just wore them out. I think that they just couldn't improve the sugar sand enough to turn it into sandy loam.

You are right about the nematodes but they don't seem to be as bad as they used to be, "knock on wood"! It used to be almost impossible to have anything for the nematodes. I constantly have trouble with gophers & moles. Watermelons were grown on this place from before statehood so I guess that is the reason that the squash bugs are so bad, thousands of them every year.