Cheap and easy way. And fast. For starting from seed, buy some of those jiffy peat pellets, some fertiliser and a bag of compost. Soak the pellets and then put them in with the top even with the dirt. Plant your seeds in those. Sprinkle a little fertiliser around them and top the dirt with about one half inch of the compost. Do plants the same way.

Watering or rain will wash the compost and plant food into the ground. Too much of either and you will have to refresh both.

If you continue using the plot, eventually the compost residue will be worked into the top few inches which is where most plant feeding takes place.

Or you can go ahead and spend a coupla hundred bucks on improving soil you will eventually leave for someone else anyway.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will probably be planting a lot of transplants as it is late in the winter season, but some things (like bush beans) from seed. I have had bad luck in the past in my yard when try to plant in small isolated pockets of good soil within the sand. Have you had good results with this method? I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars but am willing to spend some money to get it started.

I put these onion plants in about a week ago. The brown stuff between the rows is not regular compost but is what I call jungle mulch. I did put down fertiliser first and then covered it over. I have done it this way many times in the past with compost or sometimes with the bagged top soil the stores sell. The top soil has so much organic material in it that it acts like mulch.

The plants you can see to the lower left and right have just been put in so I haven't dressed them up yet.

It looks like you have gotten some good results - I am intrigued. However, it looks like you have at least a little bit of organic material in the sand already? Maybe this is from previous dressings. The sand I am dealing with is so loose, I don't think I could get an onion plant to stand up in it. I also don't think it is wettable the way it is.

I started my veggie garden in a patch of pure sand last spring. It had previously had a bouganvillia there, that had been dug up. I tested the "soil". It had a high ph and no nitrogen to speak of. I didn't have any compost of my own to put in it and didn't have a lot of money to put in it. I put in a bag or two (don't remember) of black kow and a bag or two of garden soil. I also put some alfalfa pellets on top for mulch and nitrogen. I had decent results for what I put into it. I top dressed this summer with leaves. Before fall, I had a batch of mostly composted organics that I layered on top. Did another round of alfalfa pellets (pretty cheap from a feed store). It's still got a lot of sand, but the water doesn't run off and my plants are growing nice and big.

If I were doing a raised bed, I would do peat for water retention. In my limited experience, the rainy period is when it is too hot to grow much. So, you are likely going to be watering. But again, I have all of two seasons of experience in South Florida. Grew up gardening, but none of that knowledge has helped me down here. ;)

Nice looking community garden. I have some questions about the community garden but I don't want to hi-jack your thread, but also didn't see a way to send you a PM.

Is there a way to send a PM on this forum?

Thanks.

Dave

Those pictures are not of the community garden I am talking about. These are pictures sumala posted of her own beds I believed to show the technique she uses. I just rented the plot in the garden and am out of town for the holidays so I haven't started work on my plot yet. I am not sure if I could answer any questions as I am new to the community garden thing but I would be happy to try.

FLgardenmom - I was thinking of the alfalfa pellets. I was going to do more reading on that because I couldn't remember if they could be used straight or needed to be composted/broken down first. It is encouraging that you guys have gotten decent results without adding too much. I was thinking about doing potatoes and it seemed that you needed to prepare the soil more/deeper for root veggies like these. Is that correct?

They don't have to be composted. That's why they are great. Apparently the pellets can have salt and other bad stuff in the "stuff" that binds them together. I was going to just buy a bale of alfalfa, but found these cubes that they feed to horses. If I remember correctly it was about $15 for 50 lbs.
Oh and I forgot the free coffee grounds from Starbucks. Good nitrogen that doesn't have to be composted either.

I thought that if coffee grounds are used in large amounts they do have to be composted? I am involved with horses so I know what you are talking about in terms of the alfalfa cubes.

Sumala was the name of a male thief from Africa and I started using it when I was playing an internet war game. I played the game for about eight years before finally losing interest. I kept the name when I started posting here. It never occured to me that there might be a gender identity problem with the name but for the record, I'm a guy. And I was a very good thief in the game so the real Sumala would have been proud of me for stealing his name.

You may be right about the coffee grounds. But even the biggest bag that I've ever gotten just peppered the top of my garden. But that may be a consideration.

Sumala - so sorry about the gender mix up! I'll blame all those years of French and Latin on automatically associating the "a" at the end with the female gender.

No problem. Oddly though, I have had several queries from Frenchmen about the name. I don't know anything about it other than it filled a need for me at one time.

Does anyone have any specific info on the dig depths mentioned (especially for root crops like potatoes?) or for the question about lasagna preparation and planting on top?

derbyka, I don't know anything about the lasagna method but I do have two open inground planting areas where I just toss anything organic around the plants. Leaves, twigs, whatever. In one area the soil appears to be very alkaline because of the seashell content and the other area is just plain sand. I get good production from both but it probably wouldn't work in a raised bed because of space limitations.

How big of an area do you have to work with?

As to digging depth, I have a skinny shovel with an eleven inch long blade that I use too loosen the soil for deep rooted stuff. Usually don't turn it over, just jam it in, wiggle a bit and move a coupla inches.

For potatoes: the pieces need to be buried about 4 to 6" and the roots grow laterally from there I think so no need to really deep dig. And no cow manure is advised because of scab.

Thanks for the response, some good info! What about composted horse manure would the same thing go as the cow manure? Just what I was looking for in terms of "just loosen" for the potatoes.

Oops, I forgot the square footage. It is about 175 sq ft. It was the last functional plot available, but I am hoping some people won't renew in February, and I can get a second one. I know it sounds maybe overly ambitious but I have so much pent up energy after struggling lugging containers around the past couple of years and having no sun, I am just itching to do a lot of work. I was thinking I could do winter crops (and maybe some spring ones if the mild weather keeps up) in the first one and later spring ones in the second. Then I could add even more organic stuff to the first one and rotate it for some summer stuff like sweet potatoes and eggplant.

If your soil is almost pure sand then you need to improve water retention, organic matter levels, and ideally restore the living top layer to its potential glory.
Things to add to typical Florida sand (in order):
Two weeks before planting - sphagnum peat moss, aged cow manure, compost
One week before planting - 1 cup Epsom salt per square foot, greensand/azomite (if using), dolamite lime (about handful/square foot, it depends)
Day before - add a 5-5-5 CRF and water thuroghly every two hours for at least three cycles.
The order in which I put them on is exactly that listed. I let them sit for a week then till. You may need to make plant specific ammendments such as more lime or less epsom to control the pH.
This yields a very good soil, and the next season is even better. Another thing to consider is proper crop rotation: grow legumes one season, then tomatoes, grow root veggies to breaks up the soil, NEVER grow tomatoes in the same spot consecutively (same for any alliums (onion, garlic, leeks) or as a general rule, don't grow members of the same family in the same spot twice), and take advantage of companion planting to maximize yeilds and use of space.

Thanks for the information! I really appreciate the detailed instructions.

No problem. Soil in Florida can be tricky if your not used to it. It just needs a lot of care.

I saw the ?? abt. the 'lasagna method', well, Sylvia uses it in her garden and gave detailed directions awhile back, she has a garden to die for... as I recall, she makes raised beds and puts cardboard in first, then compost and kitchen scraps and leaves, etc., and keeps layering it on top of the cardboard, it all decays down and makes a very rich black soil, with no nematodes or things found in our native soil... also growing potatoes in bags, that has been covered here... also tomatoes in bags, and upside-down... maybe Sylvia will chime in and give us more details... sally

Silvia is vacationing in Italy until returning this weekend...

Maybe I was being ambitious, but my idea with the lasagna thing was that maybe I could set up lasagna layers of undecomposed organic materials underneath, then final cardboard layer, then the kind of amendments + native soil we have been discussing in above posts on top. So, that I could get to planting right away but also be developing even better stuff underneath that I could dig in for the next season.