I would like to prepare my soil for planting at SOME POINT in the future. I have very, very rocky, sandy soil. I've purchased cow manure and I have a worm bin and I'm hoping to use both to amend the soil.

I'm sifting the soil through a wire mesh to remove the rocks and the many many pebbles it contains. I don't want to use raised beds. I want to be able to plant directly into the soil.

The soil is very dry and spills immediately through my fingers when I pick up a handful. I want to keep sifting the soil, but I would like to know how far down do I dig to sift? I'm 7 inches down right now. Is that far enough down to dig and sift, before adding the cow manure and (eventually) the worm castings I get from the bin?

I plan to plant veggies and fruits in that same soil. I do not want raised beds and I DO NOT have access to any compost at the moment, store bought or otherwise.

Please help. Do I have to dig down further than seven inches to sift the soil? Or is seven inches depth far enough to worry about sifting. Please help.

can't quiet see the need, simple way put a raised type bed over the top, sandy soil generally needs oodles of organic matter, so a raised bed would work well.

len

Not sure how much manure you have but I'd opt for a lot of something else as well. Sandy soil just seems to "eat" organic matter so locate municipal compost, grass clippings, leaves, poultry or stable litter (better, less 'hot' than manure), coffee grounds, etc. to mix into your sand. Even wood chips (often free from utility companies or arborists) will help but add some nitrogen in the way of blood or alfalfa meal to supplement.

Remove the bigger of the rocks but ADD bushels of organic content content in the form of coarse compost, bark chips, gently composted wood chips, chopped leaves, etc. All of that will disappear (it vanishes in sandy soil) and will need seasonal
replacement.

Forget the sifting; that's not the way to go.

How big is your garden?
If you can afford it add cheap bagged soil from the stores to the bottom of the hole.
No matter what you do you soil should be a little higher when you are done as you are adding air.

1) Structure. From that soil sample put enough of the rest to make a 4 inch level in a clear 1 quart jar, with a tight fitting lid. Fill that jar with water and replace the lid, tightly. Shake the jar vigorously and then let it stand for 24 hours. Your soil will settle out according to soil particle size and weight. A good loam will have about 1-3/4 inch (about 45%) of sand on the bottom. about 1 inch (about 25%) of silt next, about 1 inch (25%) of clay above that, and about 1/4 inch (about 5%) of organic matter on the top.

2) Drainage. Dig a hole 1 foot square and 1 foot deep and fill that with water. After that water drains away refill the hole with more water and time how long it takes that to drain away. Anything less than 2 hours and your soil drains� too quickly and needs more organic matter to slow that drainage down. Anything over 6 hours and the soil drains too slowly and needs lots of organic matter to speed it up.

3) Tilth. Take a handful of your slightly damp soil and squeeze it tightly. When the pressure is released the soil should hold together in that clump, but when poked with a finger that clump should fall apart.

4) Smell. What does your soil smell like? A pleasant, rich earthy odor? Putrid, offensive, repugnant odor? The more organic matter in your soil the more active the soil bacteria will be and the nicer your soil will smell.

5) Life. How many earthworms per shovel full were there? 5 or more indicates a pretty healthy soil. Fewer than 5, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, indicates a soil that is not healthy.

What do you plan on growing? how deep does its roots go? Root crops? all these matter. For root crops you need to get out rocks, pebbles not so much. For most other plants their roots just go around any rocks. How deep will you be tilling in an annual bed? How big a rock will be an impediment to that? I've switched to using a narrow trenching shovel when I dig, to get around all the rocks better. A standard width shovel blade hits too many rocks with each stroke, can't get in more than an inch at a time that way.

Just remove the larger ones as you go. Pebbles in the soil are actually good for drainage. If you have very rocky soil you're removing a lot of volume when you remove the rocks and pebbles. What will be left? you'll have to add LOTS of substitutes. Organic matter is all well and fine but remember it needs to be replaced every year as it decomposes.