Comment by ffsm8
1 month ago
> There won't be much we can do about soil absorption since keeping your yard watered will also cause runoff if the soil is saturated.
There is literally nothing you can do about it. Watering your lawn does not impact that issue whatsoever, you'd have to continuously water your whole region.
the effect I was talking about is worth checking out if you're interested - it's usually described as "hydrophobic earth from drought" and similarly. No meaningful way to utilize that knowledge beyond being aware that regional droughts inevitably make floods worse.
The difference is not enough at a single plots area - that's why I'm saying watering your lawn doesn't matter, but the effect is massive when a drought takes place because suddenly the whole area absorbs less water
>There is literally nothing you can do about it. Watering your lawn does not impact that issue whatsoever, you'd have to continuously water your whole region.
Thanks for this clarification for anyone reading. I had intended to say that a drought creates a regional problem in my earlier reply but got lost in the process. Using a highly local example anecdote was dumb. I'm a geoscientist so I understand how the sediment wetting process works but that doesn't mean that I can always easily explain it to someone else.
There are many things that affect wettability and soil absorption and most of them relate to the soil type in the area and they can be hyperlocal effects. I was constructing a hugelculture orchard here on my place a few years back. That involves layering organic materials into mounds that, as they decompose, the decomposition of the organics (logs, small limbs, leaves, green grass, etc) builds a soil that holds water so that the plants that are planted require less frequent watering. One of the components is supposed to be topsoil. You will plant your trees, vegetables, etc into the topsoil and they will grow strong on the decomposition of all that other stuff.
I live on a limestone outcrop. My deepest "topsoil" is under one foot deep and it varies greatly so that there are spots with zero topsoil. I had to buy some from a local supplier. That turned out to be a mistake. The product they delivered was riverbed silt, a very fine-grained shaley sediment with zero sand and zero organic matter. It was impossible to water anything that had been planted directly in that silt. The water beaded up and rolled downhill almost as fast as it could be sprayed. I did not know that this crappy dirt was worthless until I had spread more than half of it in an internal layer on the pile. Removing it was impossible. I capped the mound with that silt and planted my plants in the thin soil at the base of the mound since that is where all the water would end up anyway. It was three years before grass would grow on the mound and only then because I had heavily mulched the mound with wheat straw and worked it in.
I understand the point you were making and thank you for making it more clear for anyone on this thread.