Marie Dodge said:

My husband has a leaf-vac of the "same brand" (pulled by a large mower) but
a different model. He picks up all the fallen leaves and has for years. He
had another one before this one, but it was too small. We dump them on the
gardens to rot down over the winter with kitchen waste, weeds etc. In
spring we start tilling the rotted leaves under. We do it twice and
something I do it a third time by hand with a spade shovel. Despite the
impression some have here we don't use insecticides unless there is a real
problem organics fail to handle... like the WF and SP invasion this year.

I think one of your problems may be you are tilling too much. That alone will
lead to increased loss of organic matter in the soil.

http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/publicatio...s/sq_fou_1.pdf

I never even do any tillage (and for me, that's gentle forking) of the soil
without
adding organic material.

The only upside of sandy soil is that once broken into cultivation, it's easy to
handle afterwards.

I've created enough of an oasis of fertility that we found (when digging for
the second row of raspberries a few year back) that a neighbor's tree had
managed to send one large root over 50 feet straight for the vegetable
garden.

--
Pat in Plymouth MI ('someplace.net' is comcast)

After enlightenment, the laundry.