Summer Showers! But the moisture might not reach the root zone. :(

Early this morning, I worked my way around the tomato - sunflower bed, which looked totally saturated on first glance. But as I stuck my fingers into the soil (where I could do so without disturbing plants, seeds, or seedlings) I found that, in many places, the underlying soil was bone dry.

Folks, don’t be afraid of disturbing your soil, if you have a good reason. If you don’t stick your hands (or a trowel) down into it into the soil from time to time, you won’t know what’s going on down there. Plus, the rumors that nature never disturbs soil—are just wrong. In intact ecosystems, there are lots of burrowing and digging animals, large and small, that disturb the soil all the time. We don’t need to do it all the time, but we do need to do it once in a while.

This bed is fairly newly refurbished with fresh layers of organic matter and layers of existing anthropomorphic soil. Directly adjacent to it, is our strawbale garden, which was inoculated with mycorrhizal fungi and beneficial rhizo- and soil bacteria, and covered with the existing anthropomorphic soil, last winter. One can tell that the beneficial soil organisms have been doing their magic in the soil, because it is beginning to develop that super important crumb type texture. (As is the rest of that bed, which was layered with organic matter and inoculated in the same way last winter.)

The older bed, with two different soil treatments, is soaking up and dispersing the rainwater throughout the bed. As it is, in this bed in the picture, the top of the soil is so saturated, in places down to an inch or two deep, that the poor seeds that have not yet germinated may drown.

There are many brands of soil inoculant, but what I am using is TPS Plant Foods brand, Mycorrhizae + Soil Probiotics, from Amazon. The package has a turquois, green, and white color theme, and near the top in very bold letters it says, ‘Mycorrhizal Fungi.’ (And in the case of this bed, it just hasn’t had enough time to do its magic. But it will.)

My short-term solution, is to leave all the dry soil exposed that I can, and to also leave the little pits I made in finding the dry soil, so that it all has a chance to soak up the rain.

Meanwhile, we don’t have any soil or plant inoculants available locally, and this particular product doesn’t seem to be available from TPS Plant Foods website. If you use or have used a similar type of product that you liked, and that you didn’t have to buy from Amazon, please feel give it a shout out in comments. I know lots of people are trying to avoid Amazon, and I support that, even though I am not a tea totaler on the subject.

OK, so what else are you looking at here? There are two ornamental sunflower seedlings (one I planted from seeds I found at our library’s free seed and plant exchange, and one volunteer from last year). They are both surrounded by toasted and lightly crushed eggshells, which does help repel slugs for a short time. Eventually soil microorganisms colonize the eggshells, and start smoothing out their micro rough spots, and then the slug party is back on, but by then I or the raccoons may have caught the slugs and dispatched them, or the plants may be able to outgrow them.

(HMc)