Digging in: What Our Soil Is Really Like
This week we get our hands dirty, literally. Dig a hole in your yard before you buy a single plant. Sounds basic, I know. Some of you already have a wheelbarrow's worth of plants sitting in the driveway waiting. Hold off. This matters more than the plant list does.
Here's the deal with Utah County dirt. Most of us are dealing with clay, and a lot of it's compacted clay that's never been touched, especially if your house is near the bench or up toward the foothills. Clay holds water like a bathtub and then cracks like a dinner plate when it dries out. It's also usually alkaline, because that's what our water and native rock give us. Native plants mostly don't mind that. Some of the showier stuff from the nursery that isn't built for here does mind, a lot, and that's usually why people "can't get anything to grow" even when they're doing everything else right.
So before you plant anything, know what you're actually working with.
The jar test
Cheapest soil test there is, and it takes about a day of sitting around, which is the only annoying part.
Grab a clear jar, a mason jar works fine, the kind everybody's got three of in the basement from bottling season. Dig down about six inches in a spot that's typical for your yard, not right against the house foundation, not in a low spot where water pools. Fill the jar about a third full of that soil, then fill the rest with water, put the lid on, and shake it hard for a couple minutes. Then set it somewhere it won't get knocked over and leave it alone.
Sand settles first, within a few minutes. Silt settles next, over an hour or so. Clay is the last thing to settle and it can take a full day, sometimes longer, before the water on top actually goes clear. When it's done you'll see layers, and you can literally measure with a ruler what percentage of your soil is which. Most of us in this valley are going to see a big fat clay layer on top and not much sand. That's normal. That's just what we've got.
The shovel test, which tells you what the jar can't
Take a shovel and try to dig a hole about a foot deep in a few different spots in your yard. Pay attention to how it feels, not just what it looks like. If you're fighting the shovel the whole way down and it comes out in solid chunks like you're breaking up concrete, that's compacted clay and it's going to need some work before roots can push through it. If it crumbles apart in your hand and smells like dirt should smell, kind of earthy, that's a sign there's actual life in there, worms, organic matter, the stuff plants want.
Do this in a few spots. Under the maple is going to be different than out by the fence. Every yard's got zones, and you found some of that already in the "walking my own yard" lesson. Now you're finding out what's underneath those zones, not just what's above them.
What to do with what you find
If it's heavy clay, and for most of you it will be, don't panic and don't go buy a truckload of new soil to dump on top. That's a waste of money and it doesn't fix anything long term, it just gives you a nice layer on top of a bathtub. What actually helps is working compost into the top six to eight inches before you plant, and then mulching on top of that once things are in the ground. Compost breaks up clay over time and gives roots somewhere to actually move.
And the thing I tell everybody: mulch is the cheapest move in this whole hobby and it's the thing people skip first. Three inches of wood mulch or gravel over the root zone holds moisture, keeps roots cooler, and cuts way down on weeds. It looks like a small thing. It is not.
One caution, and it's a real one. If you're digging anywhere near a fence line, a gas meter, or where you think a sprinkler line might run, call before you dig, it's free and takes ten minutes on the phone. I've hit a drip line with a shovel more than once and it's an annoying afternoon you don't need.
Why I care so much about knowing your dirt before you plant: a few summers back I got up at 6 a.m. to catch the light coming low across a stand of grasses I'd put in, just to see how it looked, and it was the best photograph I've ever taken of that yard. Low sun, dew still on everything, the grasses lit up gold. I took forty pictures that morning trying to get it again and deleted every one but that first shot. What made that photo work wasn't luck. Those grasses were thriving in dry, clay-heavy soil that would've killed a lot of other things, because I'd figured out what that ground actually was before I ever put a plant in it. You don't get that morning without doing the boring part first.
Before next time: do the jar test and the shovel test in at least two spots in your yard, and just note what you find. You don't need to fix anything yet. Just know your dirt.