![]() ![]() I'd go with the surfactant, like soap, as has been suggested then I'd water a LOT slower a LOT longer. And that's a sandy soil after 3" of rain! Others were still bone dry below the surface dampness. Then the first week of October it rained 3 inches. The soil was bone dry all through September with no rain. For instance, this fall was very dry at first. Now when it's been left to totally dry out over summer, the first rains do tend to not soak in very well at first, but nothing like clay. Sandy soil is the opposite - that's what I have here in WA, and the water runs right through it. Sometimes I'd break up a watering session over a couple of days to give the water time to soak in. I'd use 1/2 gallon/hr emitters on smaller plants like veggie gardens. you have to apply the water very very very VERY slowly. Clay definitely is, I've had tons of experience trying to keep heavy adobe clay soil watered in NorCal. #SOIL WON T ABSORB WATER FULL#What about watering with a compost tea? Never used the stuff myself but it might be worth a small experiment as well.ĭisclaimer: I'm not a gardener and I could be full of crap. This might take a bit more time to allow the immature compost time to do something in the existing soil. ![]() I'd also consider using some "not quite mature" compost in another small area to see if the infusion of those micro organisms helped alleviate your problem. If it helps, I'd go that route for the rest of the garden myself. It might not do any good but the cost is small and the work involved is minuscule. Mix about an inch or two of this good stuff into the top 3-6 inches of your existing soil in a small area of one of your problem gardens and see how that impacts your dilemma. I'd go find (buy if I had to) some really high quality compost, not a lot, just a bag or two. If this is the first time you've had this issue arise and it coincided with the usage of the municipal compost, I suspect I wouldn't use that stuff anymore.īut here is what I would do if I were in your shoes. Even after making a big mud bog out of them and mixing the soil with water, the next time I try to water, the soil still won't soak in. Is there any soil amendment I can add to fix this or am I faced with scraping 4-6" of top soil out of my in ground beds? My raised beds are a total loss. It seems that there is alot of very fine powder in the compost and that powder is very hydrophobic. The only 'common' attribute amongst both my raised beds and my in ground beds is that I mulched in a bunch of the municipal compost available at our landfill. I need to solve this problem by next spring or I might as well give up gardening-none of my plants are getting more than a token amount of water no matter how much I water. It's the strangest darn thing I've ever seen and needless to say I'm flummoxed. When I mix in the handfuls of soil with water, you can see the soil floating on top of the water like a sheen of powder. No matter how much I water, the water mostly just puddles and runs off, it won't soak in. I've tried hoeing it up to mix it to no avail. It seems that the soil has a very high surface tension and it literally shrugs off the water. ![]() To my surprise, the soil an inch below the surface on down was BONE DRY. Then I did some digging, literally.Īfter watering my beds well, I dug into the soil with my hand. At first, I thought it was because I was watering too much. I watered frequently but many seemed to be dying. Peppers, herbs, tomatos, all seemed rather stunted. I have two 4x4 raised beds and two large in ground beds. I had horrible luck with everything this year. I'm having the strangest problem in my whole garden. ![]()
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