Testing Water Drainage for Gardening

On behalf of Expert Village, my name is Craig Morrell. I'm with Landscape Restorations in Miami, Florida. We're here at Palm Hammock Orchid Estate and we're talking about planting, and fertilizing. This video is about the business of testing the hole to see if it's actually suitable for your planting needs. Now in this case, we've got a hole comprised of actual soil. Sandy, gravely soil, and we would like to add some water to this to see how long it takes to drain out. If it takes more than about 30 minutes for the water to drain out, the hole is not suitable for the plant unless you're planting aquatic plants. In other words, it means you have poor drainage. In this case, we know that this soil happens to drain quite well. The plants on this particular site are all crotans and begonias, and they tell me right off the bat that this is well drained organic soil. But we'll take a look at a hole that isn't well drained and isn't suitable for anything that isn't cypress trees or aquatic plants. After we put some water into this hole, we'll find out if it's well drained or not, and then we'll go ahead and plant our plant and hopefully that'll all work out just exactly the way we want it to. The right hole for the right plant.