You can still have a garden this year, although it may not turn out as you envisioned at the beginning of May. Many local gardens have been flooded and some haven’t even been planted yet because of wet soils.
I planted my garden the first Saturday in June. It was too wet to till and I couldn’t walk on the soil because my feet would have been sucked right in. I laid several boards in a loop around the inside of the garden to walk on. That way my weight is distributed more evenly and less of the soil is compacted. I planted short rows in every direction wherever I could reach from the boards. It’s going to be an odd looking garden this year!
I was pleased to find that with the late planting and warmer temperatures, everything germinated within four days. I was not pleased when the rain came again on the fifth day and drowned or washed out almost everything.
The boards are still in place and I will try again. Early July isn’t too late to plant beans, carrots and zucchini. If you provide light shade, you can still plant peas, spinach, kohlrabi and lettuce. An easy way to provide shade is to pound four tall wooden stakes into the ground in a square or rectangle and staple an old sheer curtain to the top of the stakes. Any lightweight cloth will work. If you are handy, you can rig something up with lattice boards to provide dappled shade. An advantage to late planting is that the pests that normally plague your vegetables may have completed their life cycles and may not be a problem.
In my garden, many plants have reseeded themselves from last year, and I let them grow. Even though they are not where I would have planted them, at least something is growing!
Of course weeds are growing well. I pull as many as I can reach from the boards but there are many that I can’t reach. When the soil does eventually dry out, I will do a good weeding in those areas and then plant a green manure cover crop such as hairy vetch, clover or alfalfa. In fall, this crop will be turned under to provide organic matter and nutrition in the soil for next year. At least I will reap some benefit from the off year.
Adding compost to soil helps it drain better. Although I’ve always had a compost pile, this is the first year that I had a significant amount to spread on the garden. I did so in early May, just before the deluge began. I found that the parts of my garden where I tossed the most compost are the areas where I could plant the earliest. And after three days with no rain when the top inches of the clay soil are as hard as concrete, the area with the compost is nice and soft.
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