What to Do When Soil Gets Too Wet

If the Lord is willing and the creeks don’t rise – nevermind.

I’m writing this on Wednesday, Jan. 24, and since Monday, more than 11 inches of rain has fallen so far at our place near Cozy Corner. And it’s still raining. Needless to say, my garden is waterlogged.

Saturated soil causes a bunch of problems. All of the living creatures in the soil - plant roots, beneficial microbes, fungi and earthworms - need oxygen to survive. If the soil stays soaked for too long, those organisms will eventually die. You’ll end up with dead soil that takes time to recover.

I’ve got a crop of cabbage growing along with several types of green, plus a row of garlic and a bed of lettuce. Yes, it all survived the freeze last week. But it might not survive this swampy weather if I don’t do something about it.

As soon as the rain stops, I plan on aerating the soil. For this, I use a heavy fourpronged garden fork. I simply punch holes in the dirt all throughout the garden by pushing the fork into the soil as deep as it will go. This will help to dry out the soil, and it brings oxygen to the organisms that live in the soil. You can also use a hay fork, but you must take care not to bend the thin prongs.

Heavy rain washes water-soluble nutrients out of the soil. For that reason, I plan to spread some dry fertilizer in the garden once the rain stops. I use granular organic fertilizers, either MicroLife and Medina Growin’ Green, depending on where I shop. These take a while to break down and become available to plants. So once it dries a little, I plan to drench the plants with some liquid fertilizer.

The recent deluge also reminded me of how important it is to cover the garden with mulch. During the fall we expanded one end of the vegetable garden by about 10 feet. I hadn’t yet applied mulch to the new spot, but I sowed of cover crop of peas, turnips, radishes and crimson clover. Unfortunately, those plants were still quite small and some of them froze last week. Without a thick cover crop or a layer of mulch, the exposed soil began washing away. I really need to spread a layer of mulch over that spot before I lose any more soil.