On 12/01/2014 9:04 AM, songbird wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:
I've been away for more than a month, and although Himself did a lot of
watering, there are some places where the soil has dried out to such an
extent that it's now baked and water repellant and all attempts at
normal watering (ie hoses and sprinklers) are proving fruitless.

How have others coped with this other than puddling and making mud pies?
This does seem to work, but I'm sure there will be some reason why I
shouldn't do this even though it can't be because of soil structure
since where there is none to begin with once it's as dry as a chip. I
also do not like using soil wetting agents since I've never been able to
find out what it does to earth worms and I know they will return
eventually, once it rains or the winter comes and the weather cools.

pile shredded stuff over it and water it well.

Sadly that doesn't work. All the water does is to run off below the
mulch/shredded stuff on top. I'll give a specific example even though
it applies in many places in my garden

I planted some blueberry bushes this year and although they are coping
with the heat and baking sunlight and even growing a bit and putting on
new leaves slowly, I decided that they needed a larger root run rather
than the area close to their newly planted holes.

They've always had a big area of mulch around them but I tried to water
over the bigger area and all the water did was to run off once the
watering extended beyond the 'saucer' area in which the bushes had been
planted.

Where you live, you probably need to plant on mounds so that water round
the roots runs off, here it's imperative to plant in saucer shaped
depressions to keep water near the roots.


if you are talking about a large area, hmm, guess i
would tackle it in parts by covering it with whatever
i could find and then watering it. making the most
effort around plants i wanted to save.


songbird