This blog post is diving into water drainage, water run-off, and touch briefly on water conservation.
Simply stated on the National Institute of Food and Agriculture website: "Drainage reduces soil compaction, makes it easier for farm machinery to work the land and decreases crop damage from excess moisture." This statement is true for gardeners as well. When you have soil with too much drainage, it dries the soil out making it near impossible to dig in and for plants to grow. Not enough drainage and plants can drown in it.
How do I know how much drainage do I have?
There are several ways in which you can do this. Conserving your water supply, wait for it to rain and observe the water in the potential garden area. We would did walk-abouts on the property when it was raining to find the idea places for plants and trees to grow. These happened during gentle shows and just after a heavy rain. The second thing we did was take some of the soil from the potential garden area into a jar (an old gallon glass pickle jar worked for us). Fill it with soil and add 1-2 cups of water while timing how long it took to settle on the bottom of the jar. Third option is to stick your finger into the ground to find out how moist the soil is going down (ours was anywhere from 1-2" deep). Water the area till water pools on top of the soil then come back in a couple hours to see what the new depth is. Ours was a solid 2". If it is the same as prior, you have soil that drains very quickly. Plants in this soil will need deep soil watering to thrive or more frequent watering. If the moisture depth is greater, then you have a decent water retention with a "slow" water run-off. Ideally, you want at least 2" - 4" inches. Water still standing on the top of the soil indicates low to no water run-off. This type of soil will require the most watering for plants to thrive.
How do I know what type of soil I have and how does it affect drainage?
Going back to our empty pickle jar, we filled it about half way full with our soil and then topped it off with water, followed by vigorously shaking the jar. YouTuber Milkwood, add a couple of drops of dish soap to his. We found that ours settled nicely without it, but you can follow his instructions with similar results. Next, set the jar on a flat surface and walk away. The next day when you come out, you should find that the contents of your soil settled into different strata (layers) in the jar. These layers are important in understanding how well your soil drains. Lots of sand, your water drainage is high. More clay, you have poor water drainage. Both will help you in plant selection as some plants enjoy wetter conditions whereas other plants thrive in dryer soil.
Let us know in the comments below what you found out about your soil. You will need to join our website to be able to comment. Click on the "Members Link", create an account, then go to our Agrarian Guild Website Application, complete and submit it. This is one of our safety measures in reducing the number of spammers, scammers, and bots from joining our website. We do allow one week to complete the application before denying a request to join our members only features.
Stay tuned for parts III and IV that take about soil ph and plant nutrition .
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