This paper presents radar remote sensing of soil moisture and surface roughness for vegetated surfaces. A precise volume scattering model for a vegetated surface is derived based on the first-order radiative transfer technique. At first, the scattering mechanisms of the scattering model are analyzed for various conditions of the vegetation canopies. Then, the scattering model is simplified step by step for developing an appropriate inversion algorithm. For verifying the scattering model and the inversion algorithm, the polarimetric backscattering coefficients at 1.85 GHz, as well as the ground truth data, of a tall-grass field are measured for various soil moisture conditions. The genetic algorithm is employed in the inversion algorithm for retrieving soil moisture and surface roughness from the radar measurements. It is found that the scattering model agrees quite well with the measurements. It is also found that the retrieved soil moisture and surface roughness parameters agree well with the field-measured ground truth data.