I'm on reclaimed lake bed so I hit clay at about 12 inches. It is possible to get through it but it's very hard work. I do have to break through when I plant my roses so they aren't sitting in a swimming pool of water, lol!

Perennialfan - I am surprised that you haven't raised the soil level where your gardens are located. Raised beds would be the answer to shallow hardpan.

I live in an agricultural area where the soil is a beautiful fertile sandy loam. Potatoes were the main crop here years ago, now it is corn, soybeans and lavender. The lavender is grown for its oil that is used primarily for burn victims. It has strong antiseptic qualities.

I will guess that the hardpan here is 20' down in the ground and it isn't hardpan, probably more like bedrock which would be sandstone.

This reminds me of when I was a kid and started digging a hole in the backyard thinking that I could dig deep enough to reach China!

I can dig 8--12" before I hit yellow hardpan. And yes, I've tried raised beds, but over time (7+ years), they sort of melt back into the native soil. For me, the best thing to do is pile a deep layer of mulch -- like 24" of leaves or straw -- in a biggish circle on the spot I will plant in the spring. Then come spring, dig the hole in the softened ground, set aside the soil, shovel in perlite and sand, then the mulch, then the native soil. Plant.

I'm on old farmland -- beautifully friable soil, and I would think being passively manured over the course of time has enriched it. It is a joy to work the soil here. My only issue has been in the beds in the area of the maple trees, but that's to be expected. I don't know how far down the hardpan is -- I've never hit it. I did have some trouble with planting shrubs in the foundation on one side of the house, but that's probably due to the building of the house and not true hardpan.

No hardpan here. I have dug down several feet with a post-hole digger and found what appears to be fertile sedimentary soil five feet or more down. I have a sand pile and and use it to convert our sedimentary soil to something resembling sandy loam.

I apply a sand mulch to my breeder zinnias.

ZM

My main problem is the roots of the cottonwood tree just outside my backyard fence. That thing's got some ROOTS. They spread out so far, are very thick and near the surface, and new sprouts pop up in my yard all the time. I have a love hate relationship with that tree. It makes my yard perfect for birding, gives my yard the only shade it gets, and my kids love to play on it. However, the roots are beastly and the tree doesn't seem too sturdy: every year at least one very large branch breaks off in the wind and lands right outside or right inside my garden. Last year Munstead Wood had a near death experience when a branch came down on it.

Some miracle of chance spared it.

In other areas of my garden I've been able to dig down several feet, but that's definitely not the case everywhere in my yard.

at least 8 feet .... proof?? .. thats as deep as ive seen dug with a backhoe ...

below is about 4 feet ...

thank you mr glacier ...

ken

OK, I feel like I have to represent the caliche folks.

About 3 inches down, a concrete-like layer of calcrete. In some spots it's thin enough to be broken up with an iron bar and removed. In other spots it's too thick to even make a dent. So you don't choose where you want to plant -- you plant were you can.

It looks and feels like a buried concrete patio -- amazingly smooth and even on top.

Fortunately, I have helpers!

Like seil above, this area was once lake bottom or edge - in the time of the ancient predecessor of Lake Ontario. Soils here tend to be either clay (that's what ours was) or sand. Our street tends to be clay; the street to the west is clay at the north end but almost pure sand at the south end! This picture is from 2014 when a house up the street was torn down and the property excavated to build a new, bigger house. It's hard to tell in the picture that clay is dominant until you look at the color of the water at the bottom of the hole!

JoJo: Who exactly are these helpers?

Ken: I regret not taking geology 101 (I could have; we had an excellent geology dept in Lancaster); please explain mr glacier

Rifis, I have three "helpers." The one pictured above is Nomad, a former stray who came to stay and assist with yardwork in exchange for snacks. He's the foreman. The other two are not pulling their weight, I'm afraid... Always at the HQ on a napping break, or something....

For the most part, my yard has rather good soil, it's what's called grey wooded, not overly rich, though easy to dig, just flip it over and plant away. Though, there's a strip toward the back part of the garden that no matter where I'd attempt to sink the spade, there was that sharp tinking sound of hitting a nearly impenetrable layer of rocks forcing me to reposition the shovel many times to find a gap in which to push and pry to bring the stones up. The one area, I ended up removing about 35 wheelbarrows of rock and awful hard sticky clay, ugh! That swath of hardpan goes down a hill to where I have a long narrow flowerbed, the one side has amazing deep and easy to dig soil, the other side I've had to remove pretty well all soil and haul in good stuff. Same thing along the one side of my driveway where I had busted through a 4 inch layer of near concrete to plant some trees, just ended up making mini swimming pools and later drowning one of them, another I was able to rescue and relocate. Where the digging here is good it sure puts a smile on my face, that smile is quickly wiped from my face when I hit zones of hardpan!

please explain mr glacier

==>>> when the glaciers went forward south .... they carved out the great lakes .. and when they receded they left basically beach sand ...

thats my elementary explanation .. pretty sure its basically true ... lol.. i try not to make stuff up ...

that said.. about 20% of the county is clay ... you can tell in the hilly productions fields when the water ponds and kills everything in the low spots ...

when i was buying this house ... my first consideration was a house with 3 bedrooms ... a few acres .... and then soil.. everything else i could deal with ... but when a gardener buys into bad soil ... may as well find a better hobby ....

of course.. sand is a drainage nightmare ... especially when you bring 1650 potted hosta with you ... i quickly had to add drip irrigation ... water loving plants on sand is a PIA ... but i could dig holes to plant them.. lol ...

thats about grade 5 geology ... not quite sure it would grade up to college level ... lol ...

ken

Perennialfan, if you are concerned about the roots not being able to spread, you can test the site by pouring water into the planting hole, to see if it drains. Here in the desert the saying is "if water can find a way out, the roots will follow." Sometimes what looks like a hopeless site turns out to be just fine.

Thanks Ken. That was good.

JoJo: When I first looked at the 2 photos you posted, my eyes ( brain) “saw” an irregular hole in the ground in the second pic - as if a burrowing creature had dug it. But no cat. And even after you mentioned Nomad, I went back to look, and thought I saw 2 eyes coming from inside the “hole”. When I clicked on the photo to blow it up, I was shocked to see there was no “hole”, but a beautiful cat. Clear as day. Going back now to the ( Houzz) “compressed” photo, it’s clear it’s a cat - but I didn’t see him(?) initially. An interesting phenomenon. Analogous (in reverse) to the Magic Eye Images https://www.magiceye.com/stwkdisp.htm

Rifis, I tried squinting and I finally saw the hole in the ground, yikes! 😆

Time was, I could dig down about two inches. But the fill used around here was awful.

Ten years ago, digging down eighteen inches to put in the Thuja was pretty effortless. At that point, I could easily move the first few inches with my fingers in the gardens to plant the annuals (and I still can), but usually use a trowel anyway because as you reach #500, your fingers start to get awfully sore and bloody.

Most recently, putting in the reasonably-new crepe myrtle five years ago only involved minor effort to go down two feet.

But I've been working on it with (literal) tons of organics and soil conditioner, so...

Where are you located? On another thread, you mention that the Asian Witch hazels aren't fully hardy which suggests you live in a formally glaciated area and so are likely living on glacial till which can get severely compacted by heavy equipment during new home construction. It's not the chemically bonded 'hardpan' of acidic clays and a pickaxe will work well to break it up while also waiting on the annual soil freeze thaw to eventually loosen it up as well.

I am another who lives on what was the bottom of a glacial lake, so depending where I dig on the property I have everything from coarse sand and gravel to fine silt, the texture depending on how fast the current was when it was deposited. I also have some sphagnum muck. Despite being in the “Granite State” I haven’t found a rock much bigger than my fist. So while digging is easy, organic matter is minimal without supplements, and the well required several hundred feet of ca$ing. Gardening and planting are a pleasure here, while my previous home in the same town needed dynamite for the foundation and the soil needed sieving to remove the 30% or so that was rock. There I might hit solid granite ledge within a foot of the surface.

We hit water at about 3ft nowdays sooo..who knows.

Per Ken and NHBabs, the glaciers left him with wonderful stuff, but saved all their rocks and boulders for my area. The nice thing is it created Maine's beautiful deep and rocky harbors. The bad thing is for gardening I am the same as diggerdee. Digging in "normal" soil often involves excess rocks, and then you hit solid granite. Add to that the fact that there was a quarry here in the 19th century. I have a huge stack of boulders that were never loaded onto the ships, probably too low quality. A mason was able to pinpoint some to around 1840 based on the type of cuts in them, which were done for only a very short period before abandoning for better methods. We've used them in our stonework patio, etc., and they look great. We have many older failing trees, and my arborist thinks it's probably shallow soil issues. It's sad when builder's fill is easier to work in than the native "soil"! The old quarry pit is interesting, though.

We literally have NO rocks in our yard. We are near the coast but there's something wrong w a place with no rocks 😂