Why am I having problems watering my vegetable garden?

I planted a small vegetable garden and made little hills to transplant the plants into as instructed on the label. When I water the plants, it looks like the soil is absorbing the water and all looks good, but after I finish watering the plants I poke my finger in the soil and find that just below the surface the soil is bone dry. The leaves on the plants are starting to drop like they need water, so I rewater and again the soil below stays dry. When I was planning out the garden I tilled the soil, added the fertilizer and I did not compact the soil before planting...the soil waster broken up an loose. I'm not sure what to do. I'm in NE Florida and the soil is kinda sandy which is typical for here.

Why am I having problems watering my vegetable garden?
You should water slowly. Give the water a chance to soak in. Use a sprinkler and let it run for an hour or so. It will give the water a chance to soak into the ground.
Reply:Go to your local box or hardware store and purchase a soaker hose. Depending on the size of the garden you may need a few placed in conjunction. Arrange the hose to provide moisture to two sides of the hills/mounds. This is slow irrigation and will take two to three hours a day, everyother day for effect. While at the store, get a cheap moisture reading probe. You need to find the moisture at 4 to six inch levels.

After you take your readings adjust the time you use for the watering. A cheap timer attached to the set-up can help a great deal. Test the soil weekly and adjust due to rainfall!!

This is nothing more than a cheap above ground drip irrigation system. Good Luck.
Reply:Depending on the plant, you can dig a small trench around the plant about 1 fot around. Water that trench, let it fill and go down then repeat til the wtaer stands a bit. I do this to my tomatoes and only wtaer the plants and not the weeds. But it doe sdepend on the plant and the soil.
Reply:Okay, here's the problem, sandy soil. Think about this: if you poured water into a pile of sand what happens? It's like a sieve, right? Same thing. It's probably too late to go in and mix something else into your soil. A soaker hose might work. Contact your local garden center and ask them if there's anything you could do. Also, Florida is gonna be hotter then more temperate regions, so the soil will dry out faster. Mulch around the plants might hold in some moisture, but you have to be careful with that. You can also contact www.mobot.org(Missouri Botanical Garden)they've got a lot of research which can help and they've been around a long time and really know their stuff. Good Luck with your garden.
Reply:The best thing for you to do is to make a raised bed with the black cloth liner under neath it that way you can put in the kind of soil needed for gardening %26amp; not loose much of it to the sand. Plus by it being raised bed you can sit on the end %26amp; do the weeding %26amp; planting with out walking on the soil just put some paths between the raised beds to walk in make them the width of your lawn mower %26amp; that would work out for you to walk on %26amp; not in the garden area.
Reply:OK sandy soil is the problem. When you prepare your next veggie garden you must amend the soil alot with compost, hummus, peat moss and top soil or other soils like miracle gro. You would need alot. As years go by the soil will get better and better if planted in same area. My suggestion is to rototiller deeply with all the amendments in it so it is deeper than original roots. This way it has some good soil under root system. For this year since you already have plants in mulch with pine bark and use a soaker hose and also water deeply and long probably every day. Hope they do OK this year Good Luck