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One of the most important things you can do before you plant anything, but especially fruit trees, is check your soil drainage
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Even if you think you already know about your soil and how well it drains, do this test anyway because it may surprise you
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To do this soil test, all you need is a shovel and a tape measure, and then you're going to need a steak or a small piece of wood later, and we'll get to that in a minute
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But the first thing is to dig a hole that is one foot by one foot and one foot deep
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I have to say it was really hard to dig a foot deep in the ground because of all the tree roots that we have around here
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But at least I didn't hit a sprinkler line this time. It's happened before
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I All right We did it
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The next step is to grab your hose and fill this all the way up to the top with water
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And then you're going to let it drain completely. So depending on your soil, this might just take a few hours or it might take as long as overnight
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So it's a good idea to do this in the evening. Let it drain overnight and then come back and finish the test the next morning
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Once the water has completely drained and there's no trace of water left in the hole
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come back and fill it up again one more time to the very top
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Now this is where you need a steak or a board or some sort of flat piece of wood
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You're going to lay that steak across the top of the hole. And that way you can come back every hour
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and measure the distance from the top of the water to the bottom of the steak And that going to tell you how fast the water is draining So jot that down somewhere and then we talk about what it means Now that it been an hour I going to check the level of my water
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So all you need to do is take your tape measure and measure the distance from the top of the water to the bottom of the steak
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And yeah, mine's already down about four inches. So, and I knew this
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I knew I had really fast draining soil, so I always have to add compost
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and other amendments to try to slow that down and retain some moisture every time I plant a tree
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So the deal is, ideally, you want your water to drain about two inches per hour
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Or really, it's sort of a range between one and like three inches per hour
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And if you're within that zone or close to it, you're in pretty good shape
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The real danger is when your water drains much slower than that
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So if it draining less than an inch per hour or even less than two inches per hour it may not be the best spot to plant your fruit tree because you always going to struggle with water pooling in that area and the roots getting soggy and suffocating and that
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just going to cause you major problems. If your soil is too slow to drain, then chances are
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it could lead to diseases, fungal infections, root rot, and eventual tree death. And this is actually
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a really common reason a lot of people's fruit trees fail in the first couple of years is because
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the drainage isn't adequate. So in order to figure out if you've picked the right location for your
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fruit tree, do this very simple test. It doesn't take a lot of effort, and it will tell you if you need
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to amend your soil in any way, if you need to adjust the location of your tree, or just kind of give you a
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better sense of what's going on in your garden, which is going to help everything that you do in the garden
