Plant in different, replacement soil or rely on mulching. No point in any amending for woody plants as they live longer than the amending lasts.

Or dig out a bed and fill it with a more retentive soil, mulch afterward.

This partly depends on the reason for the very fast drainage. The usual reason would be that the native soil is very sandy/gravelly. If that is the case, I,m going to disagree with Embothrium and recommend that you do amend the soil with.bark, compost and even the usually useless peat moss or anything else that will increase the water holding capacity of the soil. Kept well mulched, the amendment(s) will be at least partially renewed by the constant breakdown of the mulch layer. At the same time, the expanding root system will have enough time to establish itself and be much better able to cope with the quick drainage even as the original amendments decay. Building any sort of berm unless it is an enormous one will, imho, result in no real improvement in drainage.

How big a project are we talking here?

FWIW, I am lazy and would not attempt this for the sake of plantimg one tree instead of another.

I also think if I dig a two foot hole today and fill the top 10 inches with water it will be gone through my clay in no time. Now if it were a wet spring and I did it at the top of my yard maybe. Down at the bottom during a wet spring if I dug the hole it would fill with water.

what size would a berm have to be to accommodate the root system of a GG
so that the roots didn't try to penetrate the existing soil?

==>>> you misunderstand ...

drainage is a transplant issue ... when we try to drown our babes ... its all about us.. disturbing the plant.. in so many ways ...

most every tree.. can deal with any soil .. once its had time to put its roots where it can cope ... and all we do.. is try to give them the time.. to do that.. its called: GETTING ESTABLISHED .....

refer to link.. about planting high in clay soil ...

almost ALL nursery trade plants.. are grown in in full clay .. so when they sell big ones... they can dig those ball and burlaps you see ... clay is not really a problem...

https://sites.google.com/site/tnarboretum/Home/planting-a-tree-or-shrub

never forget.. roots need air.. as much as water .. and when you water doesnt move away fast enough ... roots die ... and that is why.. we want to plant them half in.. and half out of the non draining soil ... so it can cope with it... and do what need be done ...

ken

Thanks for the advice guys. Ken, I've read a ton of your posts on here and as such know that you really know your stuff. When I'm dealing with soil that drains 6-8 inches per hour are you still recommending to bury them half out? Some of the trees will be planted in soil that drains 2 inch an hour, but the rest in this fast draining soil.

Didn't have time to read all the posts but the answer is simple. Plant something native or something that actually fits those requirements. Then you're golden and don't have to worry about pulling them out in a few years when they die.

while mowing the lawn endlessly ... i thought of another way to think of it ...

in your soil ... you are basically digging out a clap pot.. without a drain hole at the bottom..

so what could you ever fathom.. to put in the bath tub.. so make water go away .. you cant ... i defy you to list anything ..

peat?? .. that will hold more water.. as well as all the things you find in a potting soil.. so will compost.. etc ...

so you are back.. to planting it above grade ... and just building a a 2 foot berm to cover the top .. and letting it put new roots down into that clay ...

thx for the kind words... i pretend .. lol ..

ken

haha. When I was posting this thread I was like "I hope that guy Ken posts," lol. So if I get what you are saying, it doesn't matter if you have part of the lawn where you have more clay at the bottom of the slope where water collects and it drains 2 inch per hour vs if you are at a different part of the lawn where it drains 8 inches per hour, the solution is still to make a 2 foot high berm of organic rich topsoil and plant in there. I guess the only thing that remains is to ask how wide front to back the berm should be to accomodate the roots as they grow. I know they say the GG roots usually grow as large as the drip line but I wasn't sure if that changes depending on how much you trim them. For example if I keep my GG 5 inches width all around. I think the smallest possible berm which doesn't skimp on the GG health is what I'm looking for.

I agree with Akamainegrower, and, in this case (somewhat unusual), suggest that amending a large area is the solution. I think A...m...g hit the nail on the head.

Reading Ken's posts, it seems to me that he misunderstands the premise. I think he thinks you are worried about poor drainage.

Brandon thanks for chiming in same with you akmainegrower. If I wanted to go for the 2 foot berm anyway for aesthetic reasons would you recommend that I....

1. amend the soil below the berm with 100% compost + create a 2 foot high berm of top soil
2. Not amend the soil and just do the berm with good quality topsoil
3. Use a topsoil mixed with high organic compost to do either #1 or #2

As for what type of soil amendment. Around me I have a real problem finding leaf compost. I can drive an hour away and rent a truck to buy AG Choice compost which says it's made from "*Raw materials include: fruit and vegetable culls, ground wood waste, bakery and floral waste, loose hay, livestock manure, leaves, nuts and herbs." Or a local place who says they have....We also carry “50/50 Mix” ($25/cubic yard) which is half topsoil and half compost and also a straight Compost Soil ($21/cubic yard).

And when I do mulch I was planning on using more compost vs wood chips unless you guys think that's not a good idea for renewing the tilled in amendments.

I'm a little confused right now lol. Thanks for the help

If you are determined to have a berm, #2 above would seem to be the best option. I really wonder, however, if you've considered how much topsoil this will require and what sort of machinery you will need to put it into place. A berm 2 feet wide at the top, 4 feet wide at the bottom would require 8 cubic feet of topsoil for every foot of length. For 30 trees, let's assume an overall length of 90 feet. (All of these dimensions are seriously too small in my view.) That would require 720 cubic feet or just shy of 27 yards of topsoil. I'm also not sure what sort of permits might be required for such a project, but i would be very surprised if there were none.

It seems far simpler to me and much more likely to produce good results to forego the berm and amend the existing soil as outlined above. If you should choose to do this, bark or something similar is probably your best amendment. Compost and leaf mold can be used in small quantities, but because of their small particle size they break down much more quickly than is ideal for your purpose.

Trimming a tree's top will do nothing to control its root growth unless so much is removed that its overall health is jeopardized. Roots also usually extend well beyond the drip line. These considerations also argue against the berm and for amendment.

The above volume calculations are a little odd, due,no doubt, to the early hour. They are valid, however, if the berm is 1.5 feet high. Any higher and, of course, the volume needed increases.

All organic matter incorporated at time of planting is going to decompose and disappear long before the life of the planting of this rather large-growing tree is going to be over, leaving you with more or less the same conditions that were dominant at the beginning. If you are in a hot climate peat in particular is likely to have pretty much vanished only a year later. The only lasting way to compensate for the sandiness of the existing soil is to either replace it with a finer textured soil or to install and maintain a good depth of mulch well into the future - the natural equivalent of this last is how natural systems allow the growth of later stage plants that are not able to survive in the bare soil of recently burned or cleared sites. In some instances it may take hundreds of years for this protective surface layer to form, as a gardener you can simulate it from day one.

If you have seen Ken's picture of the maple growing in a more or less sandy looking (or otherwise almost entirely mineral) soil with a mat of organic debris on top that says it all - this is a common combination over vast areas of upland or otherwise not particularly fertile or humic soils that still manage to support forest and woodland vegetation. In a horticultural setting the presence or absence of mulch on top of the ground is the deciding factor, not what may have been dug in at first - you cannot maintain a highly organically amended condition in beds of plants that are to be left in place for a long time.

Such matters have been tested and assessed in organized studies conducted by professional researchers for decades.

Thanks both of you guys. Thinking through both strategy, how thick of mulch and what type it should be from your perspective Embothrium for GG, would 1 inch compost 1 inch wood chips be optimal?

akamaingrower, do you think Sphagnum peat will suffice if I can't find bark compost? And do you think I could get by in a soil that drains 5-8 inches per hour with simply 2-3 inches of mulch?

I think many of us are over thinking all of this. The easiest way of dealing with fast draining soil is mulch well and bump up the watering frequency until establishment. How hard is that? I still wouldn't advocate the amending of this area for all the reasons already expressed on these forums so many times before.

2-3 inches of mulch is generally considered adequate. And wood chips alone are fine.

Will: Not sure if it's available in NJ, but see if you can find NutriMulch or a similar product. This is a mixture of compost and partially decomposed bark. In New England it's pretty widely available from sellers of topsoil, stone, bark, etc. Great stuff for both mulch and soil amendment. Not sure what you're asking about the peat. It will work as a water holding amendment, but it is pretty much devoid of nutrients, is expensive and will break down quickly. As a mulch it's useless - it will blow away and it's impossible to rewet once it dries. Don't feel you have to avoid bark that's not technically composted. Just use what's available at the best price.

Gardengal: A solution of elegant simplicity, but... "Bumping up" the watering during a typical NJ 90 degree plus heat wave is quite a different proposition than doing it in the PNW even during the summer dry season. The rapid drainage also means rapid loss of nutrients. Some sandy soils do have decent fertility, but they are rare. Increased watering will flush away whatever nutrients may be present at a great rate. What do we do about that?

Yeah I'd like to know what you think about that gardengal as it does get really hot here. Akamainegrower, they do sell it at home depot here in bags. Are we talking about amending 2-3 inches tilled to a depth of 8 with a 5 foot width area of the tilled bed? It seems that would be too shallow of a depth or is that fine.

Personally, I'd love to just avoid all this extra work and just mulch. Can you guys verify that a soil that drains lets say 6-8 inches an hour is just not going to be good for the GG? At what point in inches per hour is the cutoff?

Do we even know the soil type? There were initial indications that it was 'clay' soil......now all of a sudden it is 'sandy' soil. So which is it? Drainage can vary widely in a garden independent of soil type. Position of the water table, location as compared to grade and compaction/permeability can all impact drainage and none of these has anything to do with soil texture.

Reporting drainage in inches per hour can be misleading. The way to do a home perc test is to dig a hole 12" square by 12' deep. Soil should be of average moisture - neither bone dry or saturated. (If very dry, first fill with water and let it drain completely. Then next day conduct perc test). Fill the hole and time how fast it drains. Less than 30 minutes is considered fast drainage. 30 minutes to 2 hours is considered average drainage. More than 2 hours to drain completely is considered slow or poor drainage. This is a standard Soil Science classroom test.

I can definitely say that I am in the average category for one part and in the slow category for the other part of the lawn. I'm in the middle of performing another one with three separate holes. After 30 minutes the top two holes at the highest point of the lawn have dropped three and 4 inches respectively and will definitely drain within two hours. The hole at the way bottom of the lawn where all the water runoff is has only dropped about a half of an inch. No grass grows at this downward slope portion. I did the shake the jar test last night and am waiting for the Clay to settle to determine the composition of the soil. The confusion stems from statements like these:

"Properly draining soil drains at a rate of 1 to 2 inches per hour. If the soil drains at any other rate, modifications to the soil are needed." http://homeguides.sfgate.com/increase-soil-drainage-24306.html

"If the water takes from three to 12 hours to drain, then the drainage is adequate for most landscape plants (about 1 inch per hour). If it takes more than 12 hours, then the drainage is poor."

-http://essmextension.tamu.edu/treecarekit/index.php/before-the-storm/tree-identification-and-selection/identification-of-and-corrective-action-for-poorly-drained-soils-in-the-landscape/

In well-drained soil the water level will go down at a rate of about 1 inch an hour. A faster rate, such as in sandy soil, may signal potentially dry site conditions;

http://agebb.missouri.edu/agforest/archives/v10n2/gh14.htm

As an aside in this discussion, I would like to add a purely aesthetic judgement-quite simply that raised beds look "natural" and harmonious in most any landscape and that berms look manmade, display a level of relief in miniature that nature herself never does, and that all of the drainage and other benefits to be offered via a berm can be had much more easily with a simple raised bed. Further, merely tilling the soil and perhaps adding a very modest amount of additional material at the time of that tilling is all it takes to yield good results.

Not germain to this thread, but gawd, how I hate all of the narrow, impossibly unnatural-looking berms, usually with a very tall, typically conical growth habit plant right atop, say a
Colorado spruce or eastern red cedar.....yuck. Looks about as "natural" as do the supposed "Scottish-style" links courses one will see occasionally.

+oM

I've got sharply drained soil (think Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac). Over the years I've basically followed gardengal48's advice of mulching and watering frequently during the establishment phase, which I generally limit to three years. One thing I've considered, but haven't yet tried, is placing a thin layer of heavier or more moisture retentive soil at the bottom of planting hole. The idea is simply to slow the drainage without creating a "bath tub" affect. Any merit to this idea?

Not much. Drainage of any given layer is determined by that layer's drainage characteristics alone, not influenced by what's above or below. The inverse corollary to your idea is the mistaken notion that placing pebbles, chunks of broken-up pottery, or other course aggregate in the bottom of a non-draining pot somehow magically makes for good drainage. Not whatsoever. Any given material-sand, clay, slit, gravel, or whathaveyou, can only drain as well or as poorly as that material itself drains. So a course layer under a fine one? The fine material will take exactly as long as it takes for water to drain through it, and only once this has taken place can water now travel through the course layer.

+om

I have extremely fast draining soil. Likely even faster than the OP's, but I wouldn't change a thing. The trees and shrubs in my yard seem to love it. I'll take this rocky, gravelly soil over clay any day.

I do mulch though.

Yup^ I think such a combo, fast-draining sand/gravel, when covered by mulch, to be near-perfect for a huge range of hardy, largely native (though not necessarily so) trees and shrubs.

+oM