My Garden is Sodden – What Can I Do?

From Gardening Australia’s Justin Russell

After so much rain, many town dwellers have found that their lawns and garden beds are sodden, making mowing difficult, and giving rise to concern about bulbs and other plants rotting.

It turns out that these concerns are all too real. While in the short-term wet soil isn’t an issue, if it stays sodden or is inundated for longer than a couple of days, the excess moisture can cause conditions to become anaerobic and sour. Pathogen fungi thrive in these conditions, and in many cases the lack of air in the soil causes plant roots to rot. Some plants are adapted to medium-term saturation (especially plants like marginal wetland plants and trees including paperbarks and river red gums), but others need good drainage for health.

To remediate sodden garden soil after prolonged rain, focus on getting oxygen into it. Scrape back any mulch to let the surface breathe and once things dry out a bit, aerate the soil by driving in a garden fork. When the soil is dry enough to dig, consider mixing in some coarse compost, or even wood chips to open it up again.

It’s also important to note that your sodden garden might be leached of nutrients. This depends on the chemistry of your soil (some elements bind to others via electrical charges, preventing them from being leached), but as a general rule, free-draining soils leach easily and can take time to recover.

Veggie patches and citrus orchards will need fast-acting nutrients. Liquid fish emulsion provides a short-term boost. Supplement these with slow-acting fertilisers such as pelletised chook manure, and over the long term, focus on building your soil’s capacity to hold nutrients. Organic matter will help do this, so it’s worth adding compost, growing successive green manure crops and keeping bare soil covered with mulch or a cover crop.

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