ibuzzard - yes, constantly adding organic matter after harvest before the next crop. To speed things up bring in a lot of organic matter as manure + bedding to compost in piles set aside from the current gardening beds. Then after harvest rake those on to the beds if you let some lay fallow or put what is crumbling & dark brown on beds you plan to replant right away. It takes awhile to build enough compost to cover all the beds at all times, but with diligence you can do it. The small animal manures like chicken & rabbits are potent, but not the quantity you'd need. Get a hold of some horse manures and you'll be able to speed up the process. Ten years of using chicken, duck & rabbit manures from our backyard animals (Plus liberal amounts of used coffee grounds + shredded leaves mown over on the lawn in fall. Plus our kitchen waste compost bin contents.)... didn't up the soil organic matter content as much as when we started adding horse manure as well composting first in piles or spreading in fall on fallow beds. Volume made a huge difference though I was quite skeptical in the beginning, afraid of weeds & then learned about the herbicide residue in some hay fed to livestock. I made sure we used manure from horses fed alfalfa hay instead. Now after at least 3 years of horse manures we no longer need 6-12 inches of it added in the fall to break down. The soil is light, fluffy and diggable with hands rather than pickaxe like before.

Al...you can grow bananas and fruit them on a regular basis in Florida zone 9b. I'm on the East side of Orlando and still have numerous bunches hanging. The freeze we had a week or so ago didn't help matters and mine had a lot of leaf damage as well. Very crispy and I'll remove the dead ones the first week of March. My soil is also quite sandy. However, I amend the soil considerably. What you can do is amend on top of the sand and around the plants you already have. Compost, Black Kow, oak leaves, grass clippings, chopped up banana trunks, old banana leaves, or what have you should be added around your plants at least 3 inches thick. If you want, for aesthetics, you can top that off with several inches of mulch. After you've done all that, stop off at a bait store and buy a container of worms and dump them in your newly amended banana patch. They'll start eating all the stuff you've put out and will aerate your sandy soil and will also move nutrients down into the soil. Also, skip the Miracle grow, save yourself some cash and use Lesco brand (from Home Depot) palm and tropical fertilizer...about 15$ for a fifty pound bag. It has the minor nutrients your bananas need. Don't use a stricly high nitrogen type fert like you have been. Spread a couple of pounds a month around your plants and water well...at least an inch twice a week. Good luck and keep growing...Z

I'm in the Tampa, Fl. area, we have very sandy soil here. If you are doing own root in sandy soil, then roses very closely related to the old china roses do best. They will be happy with Louis Philippe, Le Vesuve and also Cecile Brunner. As for other plants, it depends on how cold it gets there. I love Crape Myrtle trees and shrubs. Various Jasmines do well in sand also, as do Allamandas (usually yellow), Plumbago (blue), Bird of Paradise (orange) Variegated Shell Ginger (green with gold stripes), Variegated flax lily (green with white stripes), Lantanas (various colors). If frost free, Pentas and Plumerias are great. These are all easy to start from cuttings, even the roses.

when people say mulch... I think it makes a difference in what you mulch with..... here is link to one of threads where I had the same problem..... https://www.houzz.com/discussions/4122019/soil-is-starting-to-she-water-help#n=10 My soil was shedding the water... I am in Florida and have major sand.... when I started my rose garden I dug down 4 feet deep and filled it with horse manure and let it decompose.... then I planted in my nice new soil. I mulched my roses with red much..... however, as that wood started to break down it created a crust on top of the soil.... it and the sand kept my roses from getting water...... I ended up buying some good top soil.... hauled in more horse manure and topped off the garden.... and EVERY year I now use mulch from my own banyan tree leaves that I chop up with a Sun Joe.... My soil seems to now hold water better... however, I what seems to baffle me is WHERE does the soil and mulch go.... after all of the things I have done.... I am still getting sand..... It is alot of work to keep adding dirt and mulch, and I don't think I am building up the soil.... just keeping even because if I stop I am back to sand.