Garden Troubles! Help!

[zitheran]

So this year the wife and I decided to try out our green thumb. We went with two 6x6 raised bed boxes and one 6x2 for beans. The square foot garden seemed the best bang for your buck so we went with that idea and did a 4 part mix on the soil. One part chick compost, one part compost from city compost place, one part peat moss, and one part top soil. Before we started to plant everything we started to water the boxes, but we noticed that the water was just pooling on top of the soil. Even if you poke holes in the soil it will not absorb the water. After some Google searching I found that this could be called hydrophobia. Some of the remits were to do a layer of mulch and water for a long time on low with a soaker hose. The trouble with this is we have already planted one of the boxes. The soil in this box did soak in about 3/4 of an inch, so when planting the seeds we did not know we had a problem. If anyone has any ideas on how to get the already planted box to absorb the water please let me know. I did read about using baby shampoo every week but I could not real find anything else about this.

thanks

[Blacksmith]

One part chick compost, one part compost from city compost place, one part peat moss, and one part top soil.

This would be a very high acid soil. I am curious why you went with that?

In order to alter the soil content you will have to add in slightly composted mulch, manure and/or vermiculite and mix well. I don't know of any way to do this without disturbing your plants. Are they plants, seedlings or seeds?

[zitheran]

The compost from the city states this "Buffalo chip compost is produced from composted manure and stable bedding materials, leaves and grass clippings, and ground wood." Is there something else organic that I can use to lower the acid? Most of the stuff is just from seed and has not germinated yet. There are about 24 onions that were from bulbs and 9 garlic. The boxes have about 3 inches from the top to the soil level. I left the soaker hose on for about 15 min. and it filled the box like a lake. I then tried to mix it up so we will see what if looks like today. If i dig up the onion and garlic do you think that i can just till in some more top soil or something?

[Blacksmith]

If you just put the plantings in here I would dig them up, mix and then put them back in. You won't grow anything if the soil is not draining so you don't have anything to lose. If you do it quickly and there is not much developed root structure to the plants then there should be no serious issues.

[ashleigh11]

my first question is what does your raised bed sit on? if it sits on fine clay soil or compacted soil, your bed may not be draining at all. it that's the case, use a broadfork to loosen the soil below the bed. maybe even turn over the ground below with a spade, and use a broadfork to loosen the soil below that.

your soil mix seems to be heavy on compost, and light on elements that add volume and hold water. try something like vermiculite to add volume that traps water. you can get a large bag that will fill a couple of raised bed in the insulation section of your big box home improvement store for about $15. most raised bed books suggest a ratio of compost:peat:vermiculite of 1:1:1. i would just dump it in your beds and mix it up.

worse comes to worse, you could lay drain tile in the bottom of your boxes that drain out the sides.

[zitheran]

After some torrential down poor and watering every day, every thing seems to be good now with the soil. I did a soil test and the levels of every thing look good. I will need to add something around the tomato to make it a little more acidic. Thanks for the help.