I guess i should specify the leaves are old crunchy ones

Ya, that weed fabric is a pain in the but! I just moved in a new house and had to pull tons of it out, while the people put a foot of soil on top of it! talk about pain in the butt! I have very heavy, heavy clay soil. I had very good results by placing newspaper and a sheet of cardboard on the existing grass, then piling compost and soil and made a 6" raised bed.. I didn't even till the soil.. I have great results and no weeds to pull.. If I was in your shoes, that's what I would do..

You wanted to till in wood mulch and leaves in the soil.. I would not do that.. Wood and leaves are high in carbon and it will use nitrogen fromthe soil to decompose.. Thus depriving you plants of nitrogen temporarily.. Think of it as a compost pile - you need the proper greens to browns(nitrogen/carbon).. Always leave the high carbon(leaves,woodchips,straw) on top of the soul as a mulch.. It will not tie up nitrogen in the soil because it is not mixed in the soil, and it can get nitrogen from the air..

Good luck,
Joe

How deep is your sand layer?
Amending that clay will change the way water flows so that water, which follows the path of least resitance, will follow into that amended soil and stay there because it cannot get out. That is known as the bathtub affect.
Working raw organic matter, such as wood chips that have a high Carbon to Nitrogen ration, into soil can cause the Soil Food Web to concentrate on digesting them and they need large quantities of Nitrogen to do that so any plants that are growing in that soil will be N deprived for a time.

have you considered raised beds?

no digging ever

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens bale garden

I agree! I would just make raised beds!

Joe

mwnc:

I have some experience with that bagged 'black kow' product. Not good stuff, very heavy in salts, crusts the soil, we've had plants croak in sand amended with it.

Sand on top of clay is a difficult scenario, kind of worst-case. This is one situation where I would vote for the raised-bed and imported material to fill them route (normally I think it is quite unnecessary and often less good than planting in-ground). However it's expensive so you should be confident of being in that location for some years so as to take advantage of the investment.

People that rent generally do not want to spend a ton of money fixing the soil where they rent so building raised beds and hauling in the soil for them probably is not a good option. Using whatever free organic matter to amend to soil is. Sand on top of clay may well mean that someone attempted to make that clay soil into something useful without knowing what they were doing.
Working a lot of organic matter into clay soils can change that clay into a soil that allows water to move in freely but prevents that same water from flowing out, creating a bathtub that will drown whatever is planted there.
Mulch your leaves and plunk them down on your soil, don;t work them in, and let the soil bacteria do the hard work for you.

Sand overlying clay is a common enough natural feature.

You, kimmsr have said a thousand times on this forum if you've said it once that it is impossible to mix sand into clay. How would laying some OM on top achieve that result? If it doesn't, then how would that underlying clay be loosened?