Ok, thought maybe you'd say that, Rosemary. All I can recommend in that case would be to by all means delineate "beds" or whatever you want to call them under the ones where no such removal is practiced, it being of no practical benefit there...and to use whatever tool-rake, blower, unemployed youth, to remove-but utilize-the ones on (I think) your lawn areas. This is a useful material. I don't know if you know it, but "pine straw" is sold for real money down your way. Me, I'd think of a way to use it, even if just as an ingredient in a large composting setup. That's at least not wasting it. As for hating pines and living in sand country, there is an issue there, one which I can't remedy. Those are the very plants most well-adapted to your area, and as such deserve a place, far more so than all the feeble little items that must be babied along. I see the same thing or the same mentality in place in S. Florida...folks flock to that area and immediately want it changed utterly from what it is/was. Actually, the developers take care of all that ahead of time, piling all that native garbage (satire alert) up to be chipped and blown into a van (semi trailer) to be hauled off. Then, a bunch of stuff requiring endless irrigation gets placed around the shiny new homes and the table is set for yet more groundwater depletion and all the rest. +om

Starting a new garden can be frustrating! I feel your pain. I might recommend starting the seeds in trays or pots, then transplanting into the ground when they're big enough to handle. That might help you deal with what you've got this year. I wrote this for someone else, actually 2 other people, but hope you may find some value in it also... If you've got more time than energy, like I do, smothering and lasagna is the easiest way to start a new garden bed for free, or almost. Sooo much easier than digging up grass. Just spread newspaper (about 10 sheets thick) or cardboard, overlapping well, until the area you want to be a bed is covered. Then cover the paper with 4-6" of finely shredded mulch and wait for the grass to die, usually 4-6 weeks but could be longer for some grasses. I've done this many, many times. My latest one is really ugly but I'm just trying to make lemonade out of lemons with this one... drought (probably aided by grubs) killed the grass here so I decided that would be the new sunny front bed I was considering. I did dig out a little spot that had hardly any grass and put some Cannas and Gladiolus there, a tiny baby maple tree, some Hibiscus cuttings which still just look stupid 'cuz they're "dead" sticks in the ground, then kind of working around it with smothering, and bark chips, which aren't my preference but I had them available. They don't stay in place if it ever rains really hard. Anyway, with this, I'm not planning to leave the bark chips there, they're just making sure the newspaper is held firmly to the contours of the ground to block the air and light from reaching the grass, which is what is needed to kill it. Whenever I can find more shredded hardwood, I'll replace the bark chips. Anyway, the newspaper decomposes and does not need to be removed later, just dig through it to add plants in the ground. I've also smothered grass with stuff that was handy, but does have to be removed to use the bed, like sheets of metal, old egg crate mattress topper, the bags of mulch that will cover the spot, whatever's handy. I think it's easier to wait for the grass to die than dig it up, and I don't mind if it has to get more ugly in the process of getting more pretty. One other benefit of smothering with a leave-in-place substance like paper or cardboard is that the weed seeds that may be in the ground are unable to germinate as they might be if you just dug up the grass and/or tilled. The lasagna comes into play if you add amendment layers to your smothering. For example, you could put the paper/cardboard, then kitchen scraps, ready to use compost, leaves, yard trimmings, whatever organic material (OM) that is handy, then the mulch (or not, if the other stuff is a thick enough layer to hold the paper in place and block the light.) It's not necessary to have lasagna layers when smothering, but when planting later, there's a huge improvement if a lot of OM was placed there. AND, while...

blackrab, thank you for this valuable information. My husband and I used something like "soil moist" especially when planting out tree seedlings into ten acres of land that had been badly farmed: eroded, and topsoil mostly gone. We bought it after the former owner had given up on it being productive, and enrolled it in the Conservation Reserve Program, with the intention of turning it back to wild as much as possible. It was sandy and barren. When we saw that much of what had been planted died, likely due to the poverty of the soil, we decided to try plant again, by hand. There was no water supply up there, so we couldn't irrigate; and we didn't have tons of amendments to plow in, or ag equipment to do it with. I think the polymer did help a lot of those trees survive. We put maybe a teaspoon of it into each hole we dug. I can tell the difference now between areas that were planted with the polymer, and those that weren't, in terms of survival. Much higher survival rate with polymer. Maybe there's a place for such innovations. But when it comes to hostas - I think you're way better off prepping your beds with compost, and *especially* mulching regularly, with what you yourself gather, not the commercially bagged wood chip mulches. Mulched-up leaves and grass clippings are great. If you mulch your grass instead of bagging, see if you can get clippings from any neighbors. I've had huge success in a yard that was so sandy when we came here that I always had to mow in long pants so as not to get whipped with sand thrown out from under the mower, by mulch-mowing the grass (and reducing the amount of lawn by maker ever larger gardens) and by collecting all the fall leaves from the grass (I leave them on the gardens however) to use as mulch in the following spring/summer. My soil is sandy loam now, everywhere, because of years of doing this. Worms have done their part in mixing it all in. Good luck!

Oldryder...my opinion is generally the same as everyone else's. Don't decrease recommended nitrogen applications. Wood chips contribute little to soil in the way of N and this is particularly true on a sandy soil like you describe. IMO fireduck makes the best point here. Moisture retention may be the big issue. If you dump a bucket of water at the tree's base in normal summer weather conditions does the water quickly drain away with the top 2" drying quickly ? Is the soil moist under the tree when inserting your finger underneath the chips? One part of me wants to say "slam it with nitrate of soda" but if moisture retention is an issue it will just make matters even worse. BTW...I'm joking about the nitrate of soda....well...sorta. If you are not seeing any vigorous growth whatsoever in non-producing trees after 5 seasons there might be an issue. What is your state and zone oldryder? I'm trying to learn also and getting a read on the climate is paramount in doing so. What type of fruit trees are we talking about...what is the rootstock and what is the trunk caliper of these 6 year old trees? 6 year old fruit trees of most types should have a substantial trunk size at 6 years and peaches and pommes should have fruited before now on most rootstocks. A photo even if dormant would be spectacular oldryder.