fast drainage

I live in Clearwater,FL & we have sand not dirt so when I started my first veggie garden this year at my new house, I dug down 10", added composted manure, peat moss, & miracle gro veggie soil. After planting I used miracle gro shake & feed bi weekly & miracle gro liqua feed weekly. It went very well til about a month ago when the rainy season started. A week ago I noticed some leaf yellowing & curling so tested my soil again. The Ph is 7.0 & the nitrogen barely registered as low but nothing else even registered at all! No phosphorus no potash no calcium. Nothing. Now I've added peat moss, manure & compost several times since planting so on top of the shake & feed fertilizer & liqua feed I don't know how much else to add of what! Does any1 have any suggestions for products that might help with very fast draining sand soil? I've read fish emulsion & bone meal but don't know if that's added to what I do now or instead. Any ideas would be great. Thanks guys!

I lived in south Florida for a little over 30 years, so know what you mean about having sand for soil.

I used to have a dump truck of composted horse manure delivered every August to build up the organic matter.

Because of the heat, compost and manures break down at an alarming rate.

I suggest you switch to organic fertilizers. They break down much slower than chemical ones.

You should be able to find Espoma locally

http://www.espoma.com/p_consumer/tones_overview.html

Thank you so much honeybee. I almost hyperventilated when I read the results! I.ll try that link & the good folks on the Florida gardening forum suggested I try the local extension office to have them do a soil test & give me some answers suited to this particular patch of sand that is my neighborhood. I appreciate all the help. Thank you.

Maybe modern soil tests are better than they were years ago when I started gardening in south Florida. I never found them to be of any help.

Sand + organic matter still does not have any long lasting, slow release minerals (unless the sand is from limestone or coral).
Composted manure has very little actual fertilizer in it. Good soil amendment, but not a fertilizer. Depends on what sort of manure, too. Chicken manure, bat guano and a few others barely have enough fertilizer to help the garden a bit. Mostly whatever fertilizer is in such products is enough to feed the microorganisms that are breaking it down. Good to use such things, but do not put them in the list of fertilizers. They are soil amendment.
Peat Moss. No fertilizer. Has some ability to hold fertilizers so the plants can get them. Good soil amendment.
Miracle Grow soils- read the label. The ingredients, not just the front of the package. These are more organic matter. Compost, manure, peat moss... and a little slow release fertilizer. (Probably used up by now). The instructions suggest a 50/50 blend with garden soil. I think you have simply added more soil amendment.

I suggest you look into some of the minerals or powdered stone that are often called "Organic" as a slow release source of different minerals.
These materials may be sold in a powdered or fine granular form.
Limestone- Source of calcium (mostly)
Rock Phosphate- Source of phosphorus
Greensand- source of potassium

And animal products that are slower to release the fertilizer than the product you are using:
Blood meal- mostly nitrogen
Bone meal- mostly phosphorus
Oyster shell- sold for poultry (coarse to fine chips), or as a stall (horse etc) additive (Powdered). High in calcium. Look for it in Tractor Supply and other feed stores. Use the finest chips or the powder, though even the coarse chips are better than not using it.

The above items can be spread and tilled into the soil, and I would use quite a bit every season, between crops.

Then add a slow release fertilizer like Osmocote.

Goal:
1) Increase the ability of your soil to hold nutrients. This is best achieved by adding materials with high cationic exchange capacity. As organic matter breaks down it can do this, so the composts you have added are good, they just take time to break down. Extremely fine soil (clay sized particles) can do this. Treated right, the right kind of clay is really good in the garden for just this property.

2) Increase the amount of fertilizer that is in reserve in the soil. The slow release minerals might be too slow for some fast growing crops. Many of them are acted on by soil microorganisms before plants can take them up. Over the years these will add up, and the soil will get better.

3) Fertilizer for the next couple of seasons probably ought to be a slightly faster release than the minerals, but not so fast the watering washes it all out. Thus, my suggestion of Osmocote or similar product.

’78,
I’m no soil guy, but I have seen Florida’s coarse sand. Rain is leaching the life out of your soil as fast as you build it up, agree?

If agreed, here’s what you might think about trying. Caveat, I have never done it hence don’t know the arithmetic and dollars. I garden in a sandy loam with a clay base. There’s no need.

Clay swells and holds water. A stock tank or pond won’t hold water if there’s coarse sand all the way. Coarse-sand soil won’t hold water or nutrients in a rainy locale. Watch the water disappear when waves have run upon the beach. You need some clay (Remember the caveat!). If you know where there’s a layer of clay and have a means to mine it, go for it and till it in (Remember the arithmetic warning).

If you’re going to buy it check for montmorillonite. Most people would probably know it as bentonite. I’ve seen stock tanks/ponds or their dams seep water, and a strategic application of bentonite seal it.

You would need to feel your way along unless you could find some numbers–I’d still feel my way along. I would start out with a test plot and hark to what it tells me.

Plug the pipe! Goodies and dollars are draining away.

Before adding limestone be aware that Florida sand is made up of ground up coral, seashells and limestone.

OK. I.ll check all this stuff out & keep u posted. Thanks guys! I was getting frustrated...

There are soil tests for fertilizers.
Usually this is N, P, K and pH.

There are aquarium tests that will help you figure out the calcium and other hardness of your soil. You can slosh a lot of soil around in some water then test the water. I would run a test on just the sand, and a second set of tests on the sand and compost blend in your beds.

Aquarium tests::
GH is General Hardness. It is a test for Calcium and Magnesium.
KH is Carbonate Hardness. It may also be called Alkalinity.

Sources of montmorillonite clay:
Safe-T-Sorb, sold by Tractor Supply. This is a clay product that is compressed in a way that maintains the water holding and cationic exchange capacity of clay but does not form clods like clay soil.
I have been using it in aquariums for years.
The same product is sold as Turface by John Deere Landscape and other places that sell to the greens (golf, sports fields) industry.
Oil-Dri and related materials. May break down more easily. People who use them in aquariums get mixed results.
Kitty litter- Almost always will break down. I would not use it in this capacity.

Either of these are cheap enough. Get a bag, and mix up some of your sand + compost + (one of these) clay products. I would suggest a ratio of about 25% clay + 75% sand + organic matter. You could try a couple of pots with different ratios.
Grow some stuff in pots or boxes or something. I know it is a long time to see if this method will help you, but I would rather run the tests for a few months than to add all this material to your vegetable boxes only to find out it does not do the job.
If you find this works, and what ratio is enough to hold the fertilizers for the plants you will then need to incorporate enough of it to make a difference in the vegetable beds.
Safe-T-Sorb is sold in 40 lb bags, and I think this is not too far off 1 cubic foot.
Turface is sold in 50 lb bags, and may be a bit over 1 cubic foot.
So, if you want 25% safe-t-sorb, then put 1" on top, all over, and mix it with only 3" of your existing blend. Result = 4" deep improved material. 1 bag = 144 square feet.
But 4" is not very deep at all!
If you want 1/4 safe-t-sorb then put 2" on top and mix it with 6" of existing blend. Then you have 8" deep, much better for all the smaller vegies, and might be enough to keep the larger ones going. But then one bag only covers 72 square feet.
Obviously, if your tests show that you need a larger % of the material, then you will be adding a lot more.

Also every time you water use liquid seaweed and molasses in your water. Over time this will start to help your soil and the mycobacteria. With the bentonite and liquid seaweed mix you should start to see results. I would stay away from fertilizer for a while. If there is too much fertilizer then the nutrients can become locked in the soil and the plant cannot access it. typically if you mulch properly after the third year you do not need to add anything but a top dressing of compost and mulch to feed the plants. Also If you added 10 inch of compost and manure, and your bed is long and wide enough, then you may have started the composting process and all the nutrients are being taken up by the bacteria that are composting. They love nitrogen.