Sandy soil is the worst type of soil a gardener can have. It does not retain moisture and nutrients well, most of the times it retains nothing at all. One almost always have to spend far more time and effort working with sandy soil compared to clay soil. Given the same weather and temperature sandy soil will have fewer crop options than clay soil.

People with clay soil will disagree that sandy soil is the worst type of soil as gardener can have. I have sandy soil, Lake Michigan beach sand, and the best fix for that is organic material. Vegetative waste of about 3 to 1 ratio to the manure is what I found is necessary to make good soil. Without the vegetative waste to hold the nutrients in the manure there is nothing to do that and those nutrients the manure has will simply flow out with the water.

So leaves, compost, and any other organic material in quantities large enough to get 6 o 8 percent organic matter in that sand. Organic material is what you put into the soil and organic matter is the residual, what is left after the Soil Food Web digests it.

kimmq is kimmsr

Make your layout of raised beds and paths now, and keep layering the composted manure and leaves onto them.

What area (city/state) are you in? there are plants with deep root systems that can improve far deeper than you can dig.

Thanks. I'm in the central California Sierra foothills. I have several raised bed boxes that I've been filling with manure, old hay and leaves. The problem I've run into in the past is when deep rooted plants like tomatoes hit the sandy soil under all the mulch, they fizzle out. I thought I'd try digging down deep under the beds and mix in more compost. Think that would help?

There's nothing "bad" about sand. It is different and extremely easy to garden in. I have my garden in raised beds because the ground is very rocky clay but the builders filled in and leveled with quarry sand and that's where the beds are. From the get-go I've filled those boxes with manure and plant directly into that old rotten material sitting on top of the sand.

To say that plants fizzle out when they hit the sand level is hard to fathom because there can't be such a sharp division between sand and OM. Stuff in the manure does indeed leach down into the sand, whether solutes or fine near-colloidal solids with the rain or watering, or with the mixing that happens when you pull plants, or with spading or forking. A great separation of "layers" isn't possible, and also that sand does become fertile in its way.

Improving sand takes some time but little labor. Dig OM into the sand as much as you can this once, and then try watering the fallow beds. A lot. Flush that manure just enough for the water to soak down and down. Do it again and again. You're behind at this time, by a year or two, but you can push things along, even if you're trying to compost leaves, straw, and poop in-place. It might be better to put only already composted stuff in the soil and the not-yet-composted leaves and straw on top of it as mulch only.

Sand has the worst cation exchange capacity. You will have to feed more frequently.

In heavy rain, sandy beds crumble easier and quicker than clay-ish beds.

Wind blows sand off from sandy beds.

Water escape quicker from sandy soil in hot days.

Cats and animals like to dig in sandy beds. The list is long.

Whatever that you think you can do to improve sandy soil, you should change the soil to clay-ish and do those things to your new soil instead. It is better in the long run. If you do not wish to change them all, adding some cubic yards of clay soil depending on your gardening area will help too. Even adding a few buckets of clay to the top of your sandy beds soil surface will help. Change the garden soil to soil other than sand is one of the first thing that a serious gardener should do to his/her garden to save time and money in the long run.

If someone were to add clay to sand they would need a lot of clay, a few buckets would not be nearly enough. A gardener would need about 25 percent clay, by volume, to begin to make a difference in sandy soil.

I built raised beds on sand and found those raised beds drained even better, even with a lot of organic material mixed in. I found that the soil under the beds needed a lot of organic matter mixed in and since that was what was needed raised beds did not work on sand. A community garden for senior citizens was constructed using raised beds, about 4 feet high, and lined with plastic to aid in moisture retention. The soil put in was a manufactured soil made of 45 percent sand, 25 percent silt, 25 percent clay, and 5 percent organic matter and the providing group found quickly that more organic matter was needed. These raised beds were also built on an old asphalt covered parking lot.

Serious gardeners in this area of the world will not be able to change the soil they have since most of what we have is sand. I find sand much easier to work with than I found clay.

kimmq is kimmsr

I would let those layers compost over the winter, dig them in prior to planting in the spring, and start over again with organic mulches during the growing season. In fall till those in and add more layers.

A teeny bit of clay might be nice, if you can find any. We had a thread here about using clay cat litter as an amendment for sand. I have never worked in sand (I have heavy clay - trade ya!) so I'm not recommending it, but you might find it by searching and see what it says.

A truckload of silt would be great too. :-]

A truckload of silt might be nice if you could find silt not contaminated with high levels of herbicides, pesticides, and excess nutrients. Silt comes from rivers and rivers are more and more being found to have very high levels of pollutants.

A teeny bit of clay mixed in san=d will do nothing. That is like adding a teeny bit of sand to clay soils.

kimmq is kimmsr

Silt does not just come from rivers. Or, it may have at one time, but is no longer in one. There is plenty of silt that is not in river valleys. For example the MO River bluffs around me consist of a couple hundred feet of windblown loess that is millennia old. In any case, I would certainly not assume that any silt you could find is going to be contaminated with pesticides. That's an overstatement.

I recommended a small amount of clay because too much could lead to a concrete effect with sand, especially something like Bentonite cat litter, which is powerful stuff as clay goes.

Most of the manure I am adding to the beds has composted for 3 - 6 months already. Then I am adding leaves and also some old hay. I think we will try to work some of it into the soil under the beds prior to planting. Our ground is strange as it IS sandy, yet due to the severe drought we've had, it gets very hard during the hot summer months. It seemed like the tomato roots hit that hard ground and couldn't go deep enough? Not sure if that's the issue, but I hope by working the compost into the soil under the raised beds, it will help alleviate that issue.

Sandy soils can have chemical reactions that produce what is called hard pan, although most common where there is a high water table.

Where in the world are you?

What is your high water table level?

What is silt. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-silt.htm

kimmq is kimmsr

I have horses too, and compost almost all of my manure. If I had your soil I would till in everything that you have on top as deep as I could. If you can afford it ... dump as many bags of "garden soil" on the top and till that in also. Add more OM and bags of soil in the spring also. Just try to till it in as deep as you can to get some OM into the deep bottom layers of sand. I wish I could send you some of my PA clay !

As grubby said, there is nothing "bad" about sand. A few years ago I started a small garden with a friend at the beach, where I spend spring and fall -- three lots from the ocean, not sandy soil, just SAND.

I asked on here "what would you do with this deficient, sandy soil?" and reported my soil test. Folks here suggested OM (which for that garden is seaweed, eel grass, a few grass clippings, and one time some sandy donkey manure), and extra organic fertilizer. I never tried to add any clay, just the OM and ferts. Oh, and biochar from the open fires on the beach and a bag or two of pine bark based ammendment the first year.

The first year was poor, but it has gotten steadily better, and by the third year I was growing amazing sweet potatoes, huge very sweet kale, excellent tomatoes . . . nothing wrong with sandy soil! My big garden is in WV clay-ey soil, and I can't grow sweet potatoes there worth a darn.

I think you're right on track with the manure and leaves. It'll get better every year.

I've read that root vegetable do well in sandy soil, so I'm hoping my potatoes, carrots etc. will do well in the areas I don't get amended too much this year.

Root crops do quite well in sand because they do not need to work as hard to move about. But, sand still needs a lot or organic material added to aide in soil moisture control and to supply nutrients those roots need to grow.

The so called "garden soils" sold at the garden centers, or landscape supply houses, is simply more of the mineral portion of soil, something those of us with sandy soils already have in abundance. We need organic material, not more of the mineral component. Animal manure added to sandy soils needs to be balanced with organic material as well, 1 part manure to 3 parts vegetative waste or you can easily see the manure wash out of the sand.

kimmq is kimmsr

I would recommend adding pumice to your soil, it significantly improves soil drainage because each pumice stone is like a tiny sponge that will soak up water and release it back into your soil when it starts drying out, ensuring that your soil has consistent hydration. It also helps with oxygen flow throughout your soil and in the roots of whatever you are growing, because it is mainly a soil ammendment. We sell to many people that have the same problem as you and they have claimed that the pumice has done wonders for their gardens and pots! Hope that helps! If you'd like more info or to place an order for our 15lb. bags online (we offer free shipping anywhere in the U.S.) you can go to www.GeneralPumiceProducts.com