Sod farmer Bernard Sims, of Ringgold, Ga., said the heavy rains this season have him awash in work delays.

The concentrated rains of past weeks haven’t hurt his grass, he said. But when the ground is saturated as it is now and Chickamauga Creek swells to cover the sod flats alongside it, the water delays both work on the sod and preparation of the soil where sod eventually will be installed.

“When the grass gets covered and the sun comes out too hot, it can boil it,” Mr. Sims said. “But we haven’t had that problem yet.”

Sean Ryan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Peachtree City, Ga., said areas of Catoosa County have received 2.5 to 4 inches of rain in the past two weeks — most of it earlier this week.

“Certainly the agricultural drought is over,” he said. “The hydrological drought is not completely gone yet because the lakes are still not quite up (to normal levels).”

Other farm areas in Northwest Georgia and Southeast Tennessee have suffered, too.

Issued Tuesday, the Georgia Agricultural Summary from the U.S. Department of Agriculture states that rains have slowed planting progress across the state.

“Growers struggled with wet conditions, causing planting and harvesting to fall behind,” the summary states.

A similar report from Tennessee was slightly sunnier.

“For the first time in a month, weather conditions allowed Tennessee farmers to make decent planting progress. However, growers remain behind schedule, especially in hay harvest,” according to the Volunteer State summary.

Tennessee’s “critically behind” cotton growers worked hard to catch up and “sowed an impressive number of acres,” according to the summary. Additionally, some corn was replanted due to earlier flooding and reduced stands, it states.

Both states reported hay problems, and Georgia farmers said wet fields halted the planting of peanut, cotton and soybeans.

Peach State watermelon farmers also reported disease problems because of wet conditions, and cotton farmers said they were seeing seedling disease, a fungal malady due to cooler weather and wet conditions, according to the summary.