I know I'm responding a week after the fact, but I think you answered your own question....after 2 years, it might be time to repot with new soil. Plus, if there's a significant root ball, the water will just pass through. You can also try filling a water dish under the pot, and let the water draw upwards to the roots. Good luck.

I probably could dig down 4" in the garden, at least in the raised beds. I'd expect to find moisture since I've been watering deeply about once every 4 or 5 days. No matter how deeply I water, it isn't enough and dries out really quickly, but I'm just trying to keep things alive until rainfall returns. Outside the garden? Everything, clay and sand alike, has deep cracks and is rock hard. I'd have to use a jackhammer to dig down 4". I suppose I could stick my finger, hand and arm down into one of the cracks in the ground to see if I could find any moisture, but I wouldn't dare....I've seen snakes glide down into those cracks and disappear. July and August have been really disappointing, moisture-wise. No rain here in 5 weeks and, while I am sure we have good soil moisture a foot or more down, we don't seem to have much in the upper portion of the soil. Even the Johnson grass and crab grass are withering and turning brown....which isn't a problem, of course, and the lambs quarter leaves are all rolled up, drying out and falling off. The pigweed (sadly) still looks fine thought the foliage all wilts at mid-day and then perks up again over night. Normally we have better rainfall in August than we have had so far---we average about 2.6 or 2.7" of rain in a typical August. At our house so far this year, we've had 0.02". Of course, August isn't even halfway over yet. Since the butterflies love the heat, we have butterflies everywhere, so at least there's that. Chris and I mowed the front pasture 2 or 3 weeks ago and it showed no new growth at all for well over a week. Now, a few grasses finally are putting up new green growth but it is pitifully thin and sparse. There's nothing wrong here that a good 2 or 3" of rain wouldn't fix, at least for a while, but there's no meaningful rain in sight, and our KBDI goes up daily. Robert, the KBDIs near you are scary-high. My garden is looking pretty pitiful and I have been watering. It's just been hard to water enough to fight the sort of heat we've been having in combination with no rainfall. I am hoping this week's little cool spell helps. It is drier across the river in Texas than it is here, and there are some disgruntled fire chiefs in the county across from ours because their county commissioners declined to enact a burn ban at last week's meeting. Oddly (don't tell my fire chief husband), I don't think we need a burn ban (and doubt they really need one yet either) because I don't think the fires here are bad enough to merit that. I think we're months away from possibly needing a burn ban and I expect El Nino' autumn rains will ensure we don't reach that point. We are, though, quite a bit drier than we normally are in August and that could mean problems down the road until rainfall materializes in a decent amount. Had I not been watering quite heavily the last 4 or 5 weeks, I expect my garden would be largely brown and dead. I base that on all the gardens around us that are exactly that....brown and dead. A lot of people have mowed their brown gardens down to the ground, or plowed them under. I can't do either because I have perennial herbs, veggies and flowers in my garden that I'd like to keep alive. Between the 2+ months of incredible flooding and then the quick onset of dry conditions once rain stopped falling, it really hasn't been an very good year for gardeners in our county, though I know some folks had a great melon year or a great tomato year or a great bean year. It is just that it wasn't that great of a year for everything overall. A friend of mine has told me every day this week "I'm ready for September to get here." I understand exactly what she means and I feel the same way. I guess if September doesn't bring relief, we'll start looking ahead and hoping for October to hurry up and get here.

I'm no expert in any way, but from what I have learned so far, watering less frequently also let's plants send their roots further down where the moisture is more constant so they depend less on your watering practices. I am in San Diego and have the clay soil as well. I have had plants die from sitting in wet soil for too long in the rare couple cases that it did rain heavily this year. I usually only water once every two weeks and that sees to be fine even for the strawberries, that are shallow rooted...

Perhaps you need to reevaluate your growing medium or your method. I germinate in one flat and transplant the seedlings into their cell packs with a much coarser potting mix. I water freely from above, but never have had a problem with damping off.