It's just that you seem to reject all our advice that it takes a long time to build the soil. Have you tried permaculture? Even with that, it will likely take 3-5 years to get really good soil. When I lived in my house, one whole side of my house was marl fill dirt. It took me at least 10 years of digging and amending the soil to make it worth a crap.

You just seem very impatient to have perfect soil. You will never have perfect soil in S. Florida. It isn't going to happen. You have to choose things that grow well in our soil or heavily amend it. Complaining incessantly about it isn't going to make it be magically better. You have to grow what works. In my marl soil, much of which was under a huge oak tree, I planted things that didn't have to be planted very deeply, like gingers, bromeliads and philodendrons. I let the leaves fall and stay where they fell and eventually, there was beautiful soil. In the sunny part, it was a matter of digging a tiny hole in the marl, filling it with water, letting it sit, digging it out a little bigger, rinse and repeat until I had a hole large enough to plant in, then adding 50-75% organic matter to the hole. Then I mulched it heavily every year with leaves with a topping of bark for appearances. After I dug and planted enough holes and dumped enough leaves, earthworms came in, but it still took 10 years to get nice, black, crumbly soil.

We all vent about how hard certain things are to grow down here, the heat, the rain, the cold, etc., etc. I always say that gardening in FL is like going to war with Mother Nature. You win battles and lose battles, but you never win the war.

Do you collect leaves and add them to your soil every year? Do you have a place (a horse farm is good) where you can get free manure? These things all help build soil. You have to learn soil building first, which is why I suggested permaculture. Instead of trying to find things that grow in our soil, make soil that will grow anything.

In my family we have been throwing the horse, chicken, cow & goat manure on the truck patch for the last 200 years. Not to mention grass clippings, leaves, eggshells, coffee grounds, cardboard, the Sunday Picayne, The Sears Catalog, Wood chips, Fish guts, oyster shells, two horses, 3 Labradors, 12 cats, etc. We even buried some of our old folk and one crazy uncle in the garden when there wasn't enough money to bury them proper like.

We were composting & recycling before it was cool or chic. At the end of the day everything from the garbage pail went on the garden or as side dressings on the fruit trees. We only used the outhouse when we had to drop a deuce otherwise we fertilized the fruit trees.

So to answer your question yes I have been composting since composting was cool.

And yes my primary interest is still in experimenting with different recommended varieties for 9B in the soil beneath my feet.

It's good to hear that you know about composting, but please believe me when I say that there just aren't a lot of plants that are going to do well in native Florida sand. I don't know what else to tell you. Some larger fruiting shrubs seem to do well once they are established, but the problem is that you need good soil to get them established. I've had luck with surinam cherry, persimmons, native plums and starfruit. Chaya is a good perennial vegetable plant for your area, as is moringa. All the taros do well, as well as all the amaranths.

I'm having very good luck with angled luffa that is planted in a part of my courtyard that is filled with gravel. Not much dirt at all, so I guess that would be a good one for you. Also, seminole pumpkin and everglades tomatoes. Lemon grass does well and pigeon pea seems to thrive. There are a ton of tropical veggies that will do well -- malabar spinach and New Zealand spinach for two. Of course, southern peas, which can grow in SC sand, probably would do well too, and okra, because it's in the hibiscus family. Canteloupe and watermelon are two more possibillities, as well as peanuts. I'm trying to think of things that grow down here that also grow in SC's sandy soil. That's all I know. I'd say someone else can help you, but we are all sort of resigned to having to amend the soil heavily to control the nematodes and get anything to grow.

Well for starters nearly any Cherry or VFN mater will, so will Eggplant, Cabbage, hot peppers, bunching onions, Swiss Chard, Sweet Potatoes, Peanuts as you said and some other stuff that has done okay.

And among the stuff that will do okay it pays to research your varieties.

If have found that anything I have planted that has an "N" after it's name or claims nematode resistance will usually perform at least satisfactorily.

I didn't mention sweet potatoes because I knew you were already growing those. I wish you luck. 20 acres is a ton of land! I'm sure if you were to practice permaculture, you'd have more than you ever wanted. You could try an acre of permaculture and see what happens. That way, you don't have to be digging a lot of organic stuff into the soil. I'm doing permaculture in my tiny space, and it seems to be working well. Of course, I have to fertilize some this first year, but most has done well with nothing but buried veggie scraps and chop-and-drop.

I'm one who is perfectly willing to amend my edible varieties to lower my work load these days, so if tropical veggies are easy, tropical veggies it is.

I think that it depends on what you plan to do with your 20 acres and what kind of soil you bought. Container gardening makes no sense if you are trying to grow for market. Your success with changing the soil will depend a lot on what you have. Muck isn't too bad to deal with, but the deep sands suck up huge amounts of organic mater. No way you can amend that much sand with kitchen scraps and a garbage can or 2 of leaves. It would be truck loads of manure brought in and years of green manuring to make a dent. If you're just growing for yourself, then put nematode resistant stuff in the ground, sensitive crops in pots. Get a couple of pigs and a cow or two to amend and till the rest of it.

We used to have some small scale farmer types on the old garden web. 'Lou in Floral City' and 'Bamboo Rabbit'