Following the earlier discussion, it seems agreed that pumping the sand
full of yummy chook poo and nice fresh lawn clippings (with home-made
compost for dessert would be a good idea. (Raelene, thanks for URL you
posted previously for free manure and stuff - my computer got stolen almost
immediately afterwards and so I have lost it. Would you mind posting it
again please?)

Somebody in this group suggested adding clay so I looked into this a bit
more and, as luck would have it, the parents of a friend of a friend are
commercial farmers who are doing exactly this at the moment - adding clay
to their sand. These people are close to Albany so their sand is already
closer to soil than my stuff.

The rate of application of good clay to the sand that they are using is
200tonnes/hectare == 200000kg/10000m^2 == 20kg/m^2. Bearing in mind that
they are *not* adding any substantial amount of organic matter but that
they do already have some amount of clay as well as a reasonably good sub-
soil structure this amount seems to be about right for me also.

POOR ME
As it happens, I am one of those struggling but not-quite-starving adult
students that we all either know or hear about. The consequence and
relevence of this is that I can't, at the moment, afford the amounts of
chook poo and clay that is required.
/POOR ME

My question is, given that I can afford sufficient reticulation and that I
can get copious amounts of lawn clippings for free, would it be worth my
effort to place a reasonably thick layer of clippings over the sand, keep
it damp so that it rots (without or without the help of whatever worms can
live in pure sand), dig it in (using a rotary hoe) and repeat?

I expect it will be at least 3 months before I can get the chook poo in the
quantities required which means I should be able to dig in at least 3
layers of reasonably rotted grass clippings. I am thinking that a covering
of fresh clippings to about 300mm (12 inches) will be enough to encourage
fairly quick decomposition but not so deep as to encourage acidity and bad
smells?

If this seems like a good idea to those who know, my plan is, at the end of
the 3 or 4 months, to place a good thick layer of chook poo on the
sand/grass mixture and dig that in straight away - obviously keeping the
whole thing reasonably moist all the time.

After the chook poo, add the clay, dig in well and then continue with
layers of grass clippings and more chook poo. At this time I should be able
to get some good hot composting going as well at the rate of 1m^3 every 9
or 10 weeks. This, of course, will be used as a mulch at the end of the
process.

The figures I think I'm looking at are about 2 tonnes of clay (for a 100m^2
garden area), about 40m^3 of chook poo and about the same of grass
clippings.

I understand that the garden will be a bit higher at the end of this
process than it is now but that's not a problem since it is well below the
desired level already.

Sorry to keep coming back with almost the same questions but it's important
that I do this right as well as cheap.

TIA

Ivan.

ps I also understand this is going to be time consuming in terms of letting
nature take its course. I'm hoping to be able to plant out the garden
October/November of this year.