Thank you. My question doesn't relate to avoiding salt buildup in the soil, though. I am asking about ways to facilitate gas exchange at the root zone in soils that lack proper aeration for this to happen passively. Since the act of watering displaces soil gasses, pushing out what is already there and drawing in fresh oxygen behind the water, I was curious if watering on a more frequent schedule than necessary would help mitigate the lack of passive gas exchange. Of course, you would have to manually drain the PWT each watering. There seem to be two benefits of a highly aerated container soil, from what I have read and understood so far, and they are closely related: 1. Reduces or eliminates areas that allow no gas exchange (the dreaded PWT - waterlogged areas with insufficient oxygen available for roots to respire) 2. Reduces or eliminates areas that allow insufficient gas exchange (compacted areas where the available oxygen is quickly used up and the other gasses, byproducts of root respiration, end up trapped instead of being able to diffuse out to allow new oxygen in). Now, 1. can be addressed, in part or completely, by the methods described in this thread. Ways to manually drain the soil's PWT when the soil is too dense for it to drain away passively. Are there similar strategies for dealing with 2. manually when a soil is too dense for reasonable gas exchange to occur passively? Will a more frequent watering schedule act as a manual gas exchange?

just dust it with sevin dust and the bugs will be gone. otherwise hire some young guy to dig it up for you.

Plant your vegetables, at the appropriate time for your area of the world. If started seedlings put down a mulch material to aid in suppressing unwanted plant growth, aid in conserving soil moisture, aid in keeping the soil cooler, and (if the appropriate material is used) add organic matter to the soil. If sowing seeds wait until the plants are up and growing before mulching. That soil most likely has the seed of many of those "weeds" you removed and those seeds may well germinate so you will need to go back and remove them as they grow, just be careful to not also take out the plants you want.

Houzz administration.........can you remove this forum? There is no "Yard Doctor" and there hasn't been one since 2006!! Any yard question can be asked just as appropriately on any one of the many other gardening forums. Also when this forum is included in the cross posting feature (which btw does NOT work well at all) many times one is unable to respond because the comment function is disabled. See here: https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5407974/mountain-laurel-is-yellowing-and-then-dying#n=0 That pretty much defeats the entire purpose of the forum, does it not????? Please fix or remove!!