The soil around here is a mixture of sand and sand when I first started trying to establish my garden. The first season I added 15 bales of peat moss; one to each row. My garden is 20X60 which happens to be the exact size of the spread from my oscillating sprinkler when mounted on a 24" stand that straddles the center bed. I tilled all that peat moss in and then added one bag of composted cow manure which was also tilled in. I used some 10-10-10 that first year when I planted.
I planted my first garden and kept it watered. That first year I had a time with the cut worms and Japanese beetles. Lost a lot of my work to those pesky insects.
About year three I began to double dig my garden with my Troy-Bilt. I would make a couple of passes trying to maintain a consistent width in each row. While I was tilling I had the sweep on the back behind the tines which would spread a lot of the soil out to the side. Then I would rake out the rest of the soil. I kept doing this 5 or 6 times until I was roughly a foot and a half below grade. I tilled the bottom of my trench thoroughly and added compost, leaf litter, horse manure, chicken manure, peat moss etc. etc. or whatever else I could get my hands on. Then I mixed it in with the tiller. I then raked in some of the soil I had raked out and put another layer of organic material. I mixed that in with the tiller. I continued to add soil and organic material while tilling until I had formed a nice loamy raised bed about 10 or 12 inches high.
Every fall I mowed up and added a couple of grass catcher bags full of mulched leaves from my neighbor's yard to each bed. These I tilled in. I tried to add organic matter to my sand every time I tilled. Over the course of the years I noticed we had fewer and fewer insect pests and more and more worms in the garden. To me a garden where you till up lots of earthworms is a sign of healthy soil. I quit using pesticides after about 5 years and haven't used them since except some BT dust on my cabbage, broccoli and collards. I never did use much in the way of pesticides but I wanted to use none if I could. Healthy plants can withstand the pressure from insects I believe.
Every three years I double dug one third of my raised beds and added organic material starting at the bottom just like I did initially. I guess I did this to that garden plot for close to 30 years. I stopped doing all that work the year I was fighting cancer and I haven't re-dug since.
A couple of years I dug pits for my tomato plants. I dug a hole about 3 feet deep and lined it with about 2 feet of corn cobs to which I added a cup of 10-10-10. Right in the center I placed a piece of PVC pipe into which I had drilled holes in the bottom 2 feet. I then filled in the hole and added compost and manure mixed with the soil. Around that central pipe I placed 4 tomato plants. I watered through the pipe and added a gallon or so of nonfat dry milk mixed as the directions called for to boost the calcium. I did this to prevent blossom end rot. Watering deep also helped with maintaining an even water supply and almost completely eliminated the problems I had with cracking on my tomatoes. That sandy soil gave up its moisture so fast the plants suffered. Watering did not seem to help since the soil didn't hold the moisture well. Those corn cobs served to hold water and even out the moisture for the plants.
For a number of years I used the oscillating sprinkler on a stand to water my garden. A lot of that water never made it to the soil and evaporated off the leaves of my plants. So, I started watering by flood irrigation. I never tilled the walkways between the rows and kept them mulched with wood chips and grass clippings. I found that could I just lay my hose down at the end of the row and flood the walkway. The mulch would float up and the water would soak into the sides of my raised beds. We still do that but because I haven't been able to properly till the beds and they have shrunk quite a bit and are only a few inches above the walkways.
Now I have a smaller Troy-Bilt cultivator that I use to till the top of the beds a few inches deep. We plant in the beds that way. We still don't use fertilizer and add compost from our compost bins when we put the garden to bed in the fall and when we break soil in the spring. We continue to flood irrigate. It is not great doing it this way but we still get a pretty good yield and what we get we enjoy. I miss the variety I use to plant but it is what it is. We plant fewer vegetable varieties but more of what we like most. I always have a couple of rows dedicated to my wife's zinnias and other flowers.
