I am sorry that this thread is going toward a direction that is not intended. It is almost funny to see how people would defend themselves over any gardening issues, which is a good thing actually. It is nice to see serious people giving their best to this thread. Thank you. You guys really know your stuff. First of all, I'd have to agree with pnbrown that, while being a good gardening practice, mulching is not for everyone in every situation. What I just said might sound redundant but if you try it for a few months in the place where I live like I did, you will come to the same conclusion that mulching is good for soil but does not solve my sandy crust problem at all. Soil crusting is a complicated problem(at least to me) . The crust on clay soil has very different behavior from a sandy soil crust. Clay particle is highly water absorbing and the crust on it just gives it more surface area for it to absorb and retain more water. If you mulch in this situation, the mulch will effectively reduce water evaporation from the clay crust, thus saving you a lot of watering in certain time of year. This is exactly what mulching is for imo: to preserve and reduce water evaporation in soil. Sandy soil is a water repelling in nature. Anything you put to cover it will add to the difficulty of it absorbing water. It is not a problem with water retention now. It is the problem of getting water INTO the soil. Mulch does nothing to help with this, and somehow makes it harder to water the plant. Even if you manage to soak a few inches on top the rest of the bed is still dry as hell. This leaves me no choice but to water my beds longer than usual during dry seasons which waste water. The breathe holes really stop surface runoff. The water disappear so quickly and not running down beside the beds like before. It is tedious job poking them every once in a while but at least they work. And if you apply fertilizer before watering the breathe holes it is even better as the fertilizer can go deeper and faster.

Ah nature! Those look like flat millipedes. Don't worry, whenever we see an explosion of something like that, it slowly disperses. Whether by disease or predators. The first year in our house, we had tons of milipedes everywhere, the house, the yard, the pool. Now, we only see them if we are looking under rocks outside. Milipedes are eaten by other things. This is from the Kentucky Extension Office; ECOLOGY Millipedes are common in soil, under rocks, and in other dark, moist places. Millipedes cannot move very fast, and most species feed on decaying plant material. Millipedes do not have venomous stingers or fangs, but some of them can secrete bad-smelling and bad-tasting chemicals from pores in the sides of their bodies. These chemicals help keep many predators away. Despite this defense, millipedes are often eaten by centipedes, spiders, and predatory insects.

I think some are staring to "melt out" heh. This afternoon, I did a tour to survey the graveyard. There are even more than I thought in the areas I couldn't see up close from my porch. Even more were emerging from their holes this afternoon around 5, thrashing around like Godzilla. I felt a shimmer of regret and then remembered I was staring at bare soil instead of lawn. I may have gotten a little carried away with the watering in the shady spots. About 3/4 of the backyard is bone dry (Sun/hill). The other quarter seems waterlogged (Shade). Looks like the dog will be waiting another day before she can return to her domain. And yeah, she's miserable inside lol If it's not dry by tomorrow evening, I think she is going to kill me.

I found a document with the soil map for our area. Since soil can vary from yard to yard it may not be completely accurate but my subdivision was built on what used to be prairie farmland. Of course our top[soil was scraped off and trucked away during the building process and then some subsoil was brought back in to fill, compacted to create the rough grade. Then we purchased topsoil to meet the final grade requirements. This is what the document says about existing soils in our area: Malmo Silty Clay Loam The Ellerslie association consists primarily of Chernozemic soils. These soiIs are characterized by a dark colored, granular and friable Ah horizon (topsoi I) of high fertility. The B horizon is fairly friable while the C horizon is calcareous but only weakly saline. Soils of this association are developed on lacustrine silty clay and clay material. The soiIs of the EllersIie association have the highest potential for landscaping and for supporting plant growth. As a topsoil source it is superior to the other soils in terms of thickness, organic matter content, and total nitrogen content. At the same time the analyses show that the water soluble salt content, as expressed by electrical conductivity and per cent sulfate, is negligible and should not affect plant growth.