Here's the thing: the soil is still a bit wet. This is definitely good -- we had a drought last season that lasted well into this spring, so it's nice to feel like the soil actually has moisture in it this year.
But this is also not so good, at least for those of us who want to get digging. Digging in wet soil ruins the tilth of the soil. Tilth is the condition of soil with relation to growing plants.
Good soil needs air as well as moisture, and tilling and digging can compact or reduce the amount of air in the soil. Soil ideally shouldn't be worked until it's sufficiently dry to crumble when squeezed. And I'm not just talking about the top several inches: topsoil is considered the top 6 inches, and when we till at Wagner Farm, we go a bit deeper than that. Subsoil can be drier or wetter than the topsoil. Right now our area's subsoil is apparently a bit on the dry side, according to our own state climatologist's blog.
So what does this mean? This means I don't have an answer to folks asking for a definitive start date for planting in the community garden! I'll let you know as soon as I know!
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