Mid-Atlantic Lawn and Garden Chat 2026

[WxUSAF]

Just planted a few natives and boy is the soil dry despite rain the last 2 days. 

[CAPE]

Sprinkler is running to substitute for the epic bust of last night lol. No appreciable rain here for weeks.

[frd]

 

Have ordered blight resistant tomatoes arriving in May from Burpee, they did great last year. Less yellowing/curling  of the leaves. 

[CAPE]

The clover/grass mixture I planted in the Fall is looking quite nice. Lots of watering with the lack of rainfall. Be interesting to see how it does from mid June forward.

[BlizzardNole]

You have a nice setting!  We've just moved to a new construction home and there's no topsoil at all - just hard, gravelly sand.  Gardening is gonna be tough!  Having an April with almost a shutout of rainfall didn't help

[Eskimo Joe]

On 4/26/2026 at 11:59 AM, WxUSAF said:

Just planted a few natives and boy is the soil dry despite rain the last 2 days. 

What did you plant? I'm always looking for good plant ideas.

RE: dry soil, I agree. @wxmeddler and I were talking about that earlir this week. Bittinger got almost and inch of rain, but the four inch soil moisture probe barely moved. Must be a combination of hard pan soils and surface vegetation being very thirsty.

[WxUSAF]

48 minutes ago, BlizzardNole said:

You have a nice setting!  We've just moved to a new construction home and there's no topsoil at all - just hard, gravelly sand.  Gardening is gonna be tough!  Having an April with almost a shutout of rainfall didn't help

It’s crazy how companies strip mine the topsoil of new developments to sell it off and leave the new homeowners with fill dirt and rocks. 
 

I’ll just generally encourage you to plant natives, and I’d be happy to offer suggestions if you want them!

5 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

What did you plant? I'm always looking for good plant ideas.

RE: dry soil, I agree. @wxmeddler and I were talking about that earlir this week. Bittinger got almost and inch of rain, but the four inch soil moisture probe barely moved. Must be a combination of hard pan soils and surface vegetation being very thirsty.

I was planting bushy St. John’s wort when I made that post. Have also added a new arrowwood, bluebells, blue mistflower, yarrow, and a “micropond” this year. HoCo and Columbia do lots of native plant giveaways every year so all of those were free.

[AnEndlessMaze]

1 hour ago, BlizzardNole said:

You have a nice setting!  We've just moved to a new construction home and there's no topsoil at all - just hard, gravelly sand.  Gardening is gonna be tough!  Having an April with almost a shutout of rainfall didn't help

Had the same issue when I lived there with our new construction: the builder stole everyone's topsoil and sold it, leaving you with unusable subsoil and sand that they just threw sod over (which looked nice for the final walkthrough but quickly died). Wasted years trying to get anything to grow. If you have the time/money, I'd recommend getting the entire yard covered with several inches of topsoil and re-seed.