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["Alan Haigh" <alandhaigh@gmail.com>]

My brother grows a lot of tree fruit in porous soil in Hawaii which I have helped him do productively.  I believe, and I admit I have less experience than Donna here, that with a few tricks you can compensate for the liabilities of sandy soil anywhere, at least in a small scale.

 

I'm sure Donna knows some of these tricks but I'll write them out anyway. 

 

Make.annual heavy applications of mulch to smother weed competition and create a reservoir of of rotting, water soaking matter.  Over the years you create a rich layer of humus under the mulch no matter how fast it breaks down.  The trick is to keep organic matter on top where it breaks down more slowly.

 

My own trick is to trap water in the soil by burying quantities of soaked newspaper and/or cotton rags.  Another trick is to bury some squares of plastic sheeting formed into bowels to create underground water holders distributed around the base of trees.  Bury the plastic about a foot down.  I can only vouch for the effectiveness of these 2 tricks anecdotally but I have observed fine roots massing around buried newspaper which behaves like temperary clay in the soil, only better because it is surrounded by lots of oxygen. You keep the newspaper together in thick sections and it takes a long time for it to break down.

 

Make sure roots of large nearby trees are not competing by digging deep with a trenching spade in spring to sever them until trees are established.  King of Spades makes a solid steel shovel ideal for this purpose.  I usually trench large circles around the trees I'm establishing to do this using a double digging technique where you throw the dirt where you've been. 

 

Forest trees establish in all kinds of soils in the tropics all by themselves in spite of the rapid break down of organic matter and very thin layers of humus rich top-soil.  Sandy soils provide a much larger area of usable root zone as roots can function much deeper so once trees are established they can do well.