Hi Ramblerct,
I think you might have a few issues in your new location that are not generally issues in Ct.
One is the degree of sand in the soil.
Two is the residual salts in the soil.
Three is the lesser amounts of silt/loam and organic materials in the soil.
Worms need something organic to eat.
You have to provide it and build that soil and it takes years .
Worms don't necessarily guarantee a successful garden so the lack of them shouldn't be a big concern.

Dear dottie_in_charlotte,

Thanks for your reply. I think those considerations you mention explain a lot. Sounds like a job for compost. As for the years it might take, I've retired here and, good Lord willing, I'll not be leaving soon.

What part of Ct. did you leave? Up there we used a fair amount of peatmoss in the sandy silt of New Haven County which I was told down here in the clayzone not to use.
Still you're more sandy than here inland Carolina. I think if you have any elevation you want to plant you might just need some peat to trap and hold the silt and compost or you'll have to make a full time job out of watering your plantings.
Take soil samples from several areas and have them tested
so you know the soil chemistry and what to amend.

As you travel around the coastal areas of the Carolinas you'll see they do a lot of open land farming very successfully. It shouldn't take you as long as you think to get a soil that pleases you and your plants.

Dear dottie_in_charlotte,

I am from Waterford, next (west along the coast) from New London. I only did houseplants, coleus mostly. My dad and granddad were the gardeners. (Wish now I had paid more attention.)

This is my first foray into outdoor gardening, and it is very small scale; residential, a couple of hundred square feet of previously used flower beds around the foot of the mobile home I moved into last June. They had been allowed to go wild and weedy. They're all mulched over now in anticipation of spring, and I do what I can to keep them weeded in the meantime.

I am about a mile, as the crow flies, from the nearest salt marsh/creek, and I am no farther than that from the grounds of Brookgreen Gardens (where can be seen outbreaks of sand in spots where the top soil has been let to erode).

The lawns here in the mobile home park do well without extra watering, and there are a number of old deciduous trees about. The earth I have turned in the flower beds (down a foot or so) seems loamy. I have found what looks like perlite so I would guess previous owners amended the soil in the flower beds. I am told there is lots of sand further down and virtually no clay. Before Emancipation, the plantations here used to grow indigo and rice.

There is much I do not know, but my guess is that this area has been filled-in some. When it rains, some areas seem almost boggy, but they drain quickly. The shut-off valve for my domestic water is about a foot and a half under the front yard (which slopes slightly to the roadside drainage ditch) and it seems always to be 3 or 4 inches under water.

So at this point these are my operating assumptions: I have loamy, well-drained soil in my flower beds near the slightly elevated base of my mobile home, but what is (for me) a surprisingly high water table. Oh - and no worms.

I have put out daffodil bulbs in one of the beds. (I dug down about a foot; no sign of standing water.) Neighbors tell me daffodils do OK here. Come Spring, we'll see. For the rest, all I am planning at this point are coleus and some herbs (almost all in containers), and one blueberry plant (in the ground). If I decide to get fancier than that (tomatoes, say) I think I will go with a 4-foot style raised bed. The sunniest part of my back yard is also the "boggiest".

Seems as though you have quite enough to experiment with. I love coleus also for their continuous color and interesting leaf shapes. Not to mention that one plant so easily makes many just rooting them in a jar of water.
That boggy sunny area of the back yard may just need some big upside down clay pots to set your potted plants on. Some elevation and not drowning although coleus don't seem to mind the wet so long as it's not permanent or
salty. Florida Anise do well in that condition and there's one variety that has pale lime colored leaves that contrast great with the red and burgundy coleus of the sun tolerant varieties. It may be the heat and humidity that confounds your efforts with some plants. Live and learn.
Boggy or standing water is going to be a mosquito issue you've probably encountered already. Might put a couple of the 'donuts' that kill off the larvae in the spots persistently wet.
It's a devil wanting to garden but being driven back by the biting bugs.

Got a cousin in Waterford. I'm from Mt. Carmel (Hamden).
Great farming area, super sandy-silt.

A thought, you asked about worms and I assume you want to grow stuff. I put cement blocks or other media and made a "square foot garden". You can put manure on the bottom ( from Lowes or a horse farm ). On top put "engineered top soil" that is mostly rotted shredded stumps. the only thing is that if you used engieered top soil you need to apply nitrogen regularly because it sucks it up

that is what works for me