I'm going to first say, I know what ground smells like. Earthy earth, sweet manure farms, regular middle of nowhere, tons of trees and brush dirt. This smell is not like that.
After the past few days of rain, the front yard smells wrong. It smells like a damp moldy musty basement. I've lived here a while and never smelled this particular smell. and I smell it most places in the yard. Its not a sewer smell, just a rotting dirt smell.
I'm not sure. I wouldn't say when i smelled it, "That smells like sulfur" but it might be a possibility. How would sulfur leach into the soil in the space of a month?
Have you had a really wet few months? Maybe the ground has been saturated enough to cause a mold to grow? I'm just guessing but that's what it sounds like to me.
That might be it. I feel like the drainage in this side of the road is very messed up. I'm wondering if a driveway poured before I moved in filled up some important drainage ditches.
Yeah, it's sounding like mold or something like mold to me. I've never had that problem myself, though. We've had a lot of issues, but fortunately, that's not one of them.
I didn't know soil could mold! I mean, I know that moss and other organisms help turn soil, but I think of mold causing a smell like that means the natural process is out of balance?
I will just be the voice of paranoia. I used to live in Kokomo Indiana and we stated getting that same sort of smell. Turns out it was one of the industries near buy dumping and it was getting in the water and ground. You don't live near any factories or anything do you?
That makes a lot of sense actually. There is a factory up the street that was accused of dumping certain chemicals into the pond behind its building. It was in the 80's and apparently didn't know they shouldn't. However these are persistent chemicals, but we were told they didn't travel beyond the perimeter of the factory.
How many times have people been told this is this and that is that and they have taken the word of the "experts" for it? Remember that Julia Roberts movie, ERIN BROCKOVICH?
Have someone else take a sample of the soil and the water before it is too late.
