We had a significant rain event last Thursday evening (7 Feb, 19) in Braidwood with 80mm falling in 2 hours. This is over 3 inches in the old language and resulted in flooded creeks, roads and some houses. It also filled the water tanks and everything in general got a really good drenching.
On Thursday morning before the rain we prepared a couple of beds for planting. One bed was planted with bean seeds while we planted the other bed this morning with a range of seedlings and seeds. When we prepare beds for planting we like the soil to be well worked and aerated. The heavy rain on Thursday evening formed a crust on the bed and we needed to use a three prong claw hoe also called a 3 tooth cultivator to break the crust so we could plant.
What was really interesting is that this evening I gave both beds a light hand water as I do with newly planted beds. As you can see from the photo, the bed we cultivated to break up the crust formed from the rain and planted with seedlings, has retained moisture from the watering, while the bed planted with bean seeds on Thursday before the rain and which now has a thick crust has lost all the moisture from the watering. You will also note that there has not been any seed germination. Bean seeds usually take between 4 to 10 days to germinate.
It will be interesting to see how long the bean seeds take to germinate in this particular bed. Previous bean plantings this season has seen germination occurring in 4 to 5 days
A ’well structured‘ soil has plenty of living spaces, storage spaces, doorways, and passages (for utilisation by water, gases, nutrients, roots and a vast array of organisms). (Vic Ag, Australia)
The crust that has formed on the bed is a result of compacted soil from the rain, compacting the spaces needed in the soil to enable good water penetration ease of root development and plant nutrient uptake.
PS. The link to the site listed above is quite interesting and well worth a read!
Happy gardening
