By Terry Rector

All this winter and spring rain served a useful purpose for a while, I suppose. It’s made for a good excuse for most everything that hasn’t gotten done when I said it would. I’m way behind all over outside. Now we need catch-up weather for a couple of weeks. But we also need to keep in mind wet spells like this have happened before and will again.

We just need to be patient with any soil prep yet to come. Tilling garden soil when it is too wet and running heavy mowers over soggy lawns can wind up making things worse. Soil compaction takes longer for nature to correct than simply drying out. And compaction can happen when we mess with wet dirt.

One of the best things to do to help garden soil handle wet conditions is to slowly and consistently increase the organic matter level over the years. This does not have to mean buying and hauling in large amounts of composted stuff every year. Just adding a layer of organic mulch each year will improve the soil as the mulch slowly decomposes and works its way down.

Soil organic matter does two things to help with water. First it improves internal drainage by creating air pores and keeping dirt particles from binding into clods. On the flip side, organic matter helps out during dry spells by releasing absorbed water.

We’ve got some garden soil that is too wet right now, but we are still a ways from having much overly saturated soil. That occurs when there is no oxygen in the soil for days on end because water has taken over all the air pores and rain or flooding keeps the pores full of water. What happens then is the necessary soil microbes dependent on oxygen start dying off. If relief doesn’t come soon in the form of oxygen via soil drying, a new set of bugs, aka anaerobic microbes, start multiplying.

There are some plant species “designed” to live among such soil life, but they are not the ones we have growing in our landscapes and gardens. On the rare occasions when we do actually have temporary oxygen-less soil due to excess water, plants do suffer.

But it is not the 25-year-old shrubs and St. Augustine that are going to croak. Nope, it will be the ones planted just last year. They haven’t gotten tough enough yet. Of course annuals like tomato plants would be also be at risk with their youthful root systems, but they didn’t cost near as much as the azaleas.

So, there’re two ways we can deal with soil too wet for our liking now. First, do no harm. That is, don’t compact wet soil. Secondly, adding more organic matter over time helps “waterproof” soil.

Ah, but an aforementioned third thing is the most important way to physically and mentally deal with too much rain. Patience. July will get here and the wet spring will be forgotten.

•

Terry Rector writes for the Warren County Soil and Water Conservation District, 601-636-7679 ext. 3.