How often do you water and for how long?

How often do you mow and how short/long?

How often do you fertilizer and with what product?

Surface apps of the materials you suggested are all fine. Proper watering, mowing, and fertilizing are key, though.

In zone 9, normally, the Soil Food Web will be active year around so you need to add lots of organic matter continuously. What organic matter is readily available, free, that you can easily get. Manure could be something to consider after some vegetative waste is in the soil or any nutrients in that manure will simply flow out with the water, nothing in the soil to hold those nutrients. As a last resort if you can find nothing available for free you may need to purchase materials but that can get to be very expensive.

but is laying the organic material on top the only way to do it? Is there a way to get some organic material down 2-4 inches?

The only way to get organic matter into the soil right away would be to till it in, which means destroying what lawn you may have. Plunking organic matter on the soil will allow the Soil Food Web to incorporate it for you, much less work although it does take much longer.

Grass has the characteristic of shedding roots. Every year it replaces its roots and the old ones rot away. Roots are organic matter. Thus, simply growing grass puts organic matter down several inches. Also mulch mowing keeps recycling the clippings which decompose at the surface and feed the soil microbes. Microbes are also organic matter.

Kimmsr is right about tilling destroying your lawn but there are more reasons not to till. Microbes live in zones. There are root dwellers and surface dwellers. If you till the soil you mix them up and those root dwellers who end up at the surface will die. And vice versa. They will eventually redistribute themselves but why go to the trouble of tilling? Tilling is really not a good idea for what you want to do. If you were starting a new lawn from scratch I would not suggest tilling.

Keeping the soil evenly moist (not soggy) for a few weeks is a good way to grow fungi in your soil. One thing that can help with that is the addition of a little hair shampoo to your lawn every week. Hair shampoo is not anti bacterial so that is a big plus. What the soap does is allow the water to penetrate deeper. When it does that it helps maintain the moisture levels more evenly for longer. Fungi love that. The app rate for soap from a hose end sprayer is a tablespoon up to 3 ounces per gallon. I just adjust it until I see foamy stuff coming out of the sprayer. After you apply the soap, then water normally (deep - like for an hour or more in each zone).

Soaps, and detergents, of any kind are anti bacterials, they do kill bacteria in addition to removing grease and grime. The amount you use on your hands versus what works its way into the waste stream is the key to that however and adding a drop or two to a hose end sprayer may not be as bad as dumping a couple of gallons. The soap, or detergent, will reduce the surface tension of the water so it can flow easier and that may be a short term help but not a substitute for organic matter.

I live about an hour south of Tampa and it seems the sugar sand soil has a super high surface tension to where even that week we had 8 inches of rain in 2 days, there were spots where under the first 1/2" of sugar sand it was completely DRY. I know organic matter will work but it will take forever and I have been doing my own ammendments to speed it along by adding calcified clay mixed with compost and then adding that to bar areas and then sprinkling it over grass areas. The baby shampoo spray might be useful until the food-soil web starts working.

I live about an hour south of Tampa and it seems the sugar sand soil has a super high surface tension to where even that week we had 8 inches of rain in 2 days, there were spots where under the first 1/2" of sugar sand it was completely DRY. I know organic matter will work but it will take forever and I have been doing my own ammendments to speed it along by adding calcified clay mixed with compost and then adding that to bar areas and then sprinkling it over grass areas. The baby shampoo spray might be useful until the food-soil web starts working.

A possible alternative to shampoo would be to spray with molasses. Sugars are also used as wetting agents. If my soil ever turns hard again, I'll try that. I have gallons of molasses that friends have brought me thinking I needed it. I've sprayed it at every dilution rate looking for some magic to happen and never saw any benefit. I was looking at the grass, though, and not the soil.

I have the same problem of dry sandy soil, I have applied compost the last few seasons that I get from out county land fill for free. It is not the best compost, but is does seem to be mature and stable, this appears to have increased my organic content so I have reduced my organic fertilizer application to half what it was and my grass looks great.

You may want to contact your local county landfill to see if they provide free compost.

eretsaw644,

What kind of grass are you growing? Are you in the Tampa area?

Check out http://www.turfprousa.com/lawn_and_garden_prodcuts.html
they have liduid Turf Pro to add microelements, beneficial fungi and bacteria, etc. into the soil to the roots, it is not a fertilizer, it is soil amendment. Exclusively beneficial for turf and all plants as well, it could be sprayed to any plant. Their web explains everything. You may want to apply it now, and then in fall-winter, when your grass become brown, mow it short and cover with thin layer of compost (~1/4") like topdressing, distributing with a flat side of a rake. Good luck!

Keep in mind that adding "benficial fingi and bacteria" to soiuls with little food for them to live in, ie. organic matter, is largely a waste of time, money, and energy because without a food source they cannot live and will either die or go dormant until the environment is made better by adding organic matter to the soil. With sufficent levels of organic matter in the soil you will have a population of bactgerial and fungi and will have no need to spend money on products thjat add them to your soil.

I never addressed the organic matter other than to say that roots make the best organic matter and getting water in there is important. With that in mind I would do the soap or molasses spray every week but also start with organic fertilizer (like alfalfa pellets). Apply liberally at 20-30 pounds per 1,000 square feet every month. This will go a long way to improving your roots and turf.

There's no need to aerate sand. Aeration is for hard or compacted clays. Sand does not get hard like clay gets hard.

what i have done and would suggest is to use a core aerator, then dump small piles of well composted manure around the yard, I used horse. then rake it over the lawn filling the holes. that gets it a few inches down as you want, then water and you should see some results. j

If someone has compacted clay soils a plug aerator might be a good idea, but in sandy soils it is, generally, unnecessary work doing that.