Earlier this week, most vegetable growers were waiting for the standing water to recede from their gardens – or in many cases, from the plot of mud where they had hoped to be planting hot-weather vegetables about now.

Sadly, like the watched pot that is slow to boil, saturated garden soil seems to take an eternity to dry out, particularly when we are anxious to get to work.

How quickly a saturated garden will dry out depends on a number of factors, including the type of soil you have (sandy soil drains better than soil that is high in clay), how level the garden is (low spots create pockets where water collects) and whether the area already has been tilled this season. Ground that has been aerated with a tiller tends to let go of moisture a lot more quickly.

None of this is rocket science, but understanding what to do and what not to do after prolonged heavy rains can make a great deal of difference in the success of your garden.

The most helpful thing you can do is to stay out of the garden until the soil is dry enough to support your weight. If your shoe leaves a deep impression in the soil, it’s still too wet. Foot traffic in a damp garden compacts the soil, which is especially a problem in tilled soil. When the soil does dry out, it will dry hard.

I recall the first time I encountered this situation as a novice gardener. I tried to walk inside the fence to check on my veggies after series of heavy rains, but as soon as I stepped onto soil that had been tilled, I was ankle-deep in mud. Of course, when the soil did dry out, the misadventure was recorded by humongous footprints and a pair of handprints, left when I fell forward after I tried to keep walking and lost my balance.

Well-tilled soil that has been thoroughly soaked by several days of rain behaves very much like quicksand. While it does have a bottom and isn’t as perilous as the quicksand in the old jungle movies – where the only thing left of Bwana was the pith helmet floating in the puddle – garden mud can provide drama of its own. After the ankle-grab comes the giant sucking sound when you try to pull a foot out of the goo. Expect the shoes to come off, which means you’ll have to wade out with bare feet.

Once the soil is dry enough to walk on, it may still be too wet to till. Avoid tilling soil that is moist enough to roll between your fingers. If you do, the tilling will be difficult, and the soil will clump. Again, the main problem is that the soil will dry hard and lose the friable quality that allows it to run through your fingers or, better yet, that makes it easy for roots to spread underground.

If the soil is dry enough to walk on but still too damp to till, you can try to speed the process along by piercing the soil repeatedly with a garden fork. This tactic, which allows air in and moisture to escape, is also effective if you are wanting the soil around vegetable plants to dry a bit more quickly in order to avert the diseases that occur when the soil remains damp and cool. Be sure to avoid poking the roots when you stick the fork into the soil around the plants.

The main problems for tomato plants that have sat in wet soil too long are leaf roll, whose telltale symptom is exactly what the name implies, and blight, which causes dark patches on leaves. Other moisture-related problems for garden vegetables include a variety of molds. The best preventative, of course, is plenty of sunshine.

Given that our precipitation concerns the past few summers have involved drought, the challenges posed by wet weather almost seem welcome. However, at the first sign of blight, you will need to remove the affected tomato plants to prevent them from infecting your garden.