Garden Moisture Question

Here in Wisconsin we have had an extremely wet spring, flooding everywhere. Now it's beginning to dry up. Parts of my garden were so wet that a shovel full yielded dripping muck. My early peas, though I got half a crop off of them, didn't put roots down below an inch. I have been cultivating regularly and the top 4 or 5 inches is getting quite dry, though if you go down any deeper the soil is still quite wet. The veggies are starting to look dry, peas are very slowly filling out, even radishes going slow. I also have tomatos, corn, pepper, onions, beans, various hill plants, all growing slow, they look like they need watering.

My question is, am I better off not watering and hopefully forcing these plants to sink deeper roots, (clay soil, amended with sand and compost)? Is it better to bite the bullet on fast growth right now in favor of root delvelopment? Or should I water even though, as I said, there is plenty of moisture 6 to 8 inches down? How best to recover from the deluge we were subjected to for 6 weeks? Thanks for any advice!

This mean your plant are receiving little sun in these period.

When plant grow under little sun, they will grow tall and their leaf will grow big inorder to get more sun. Plant part above ground will evaporate water, more surface expose more evaporation.

When water level are high, root will not grow where there is no oxygen, root will rotten if it already there. Root for taking up water, less root less water take up.

Your plant are getting more sun now.

It's OK for a plant under little sun with a lot of above ground grow but little root. But once it receive more sun, it will become dehydrate. Some will drop leaf and regrow with smaller size leaf to reduce the surface expose. Some will shut down the hole on leaf to reduce evaporation. Some will simply die.

You are taking a risk of the plan will be injure or dead before their root can reach the water that is 6 to 8 inches down. I do doubt they can grow their root when they are lack of water.

From small plant I will suggest put some shading on them. But I don't think this is practical in this case.

I will suggest you water them, after that put a layer of mulch to keep the soil cool and reduce evaporation.

Pruning and removing some old leaf(yellowing) will also help to reduce the evaporation. The main point are keep the above and under ground grow in propotional with the sun receive.

Sorry for my bad English. I do now I did using some wrong words. I hope you can understand what I try to express.

HTH, Wong

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