The TAO of Dirt

Clay soil in the Salt River Valley

The Tao of Dirt is a Website dedicated to the soil mechanics of Arizona. One of my daughters once did a school science project on the soils in Eastern Maricopa County. We drove around the area collecting samples of different soil types. I got a book with all the soil maps of Maricopa County and we were able to identify all of the types we collected. I have always appreciated the importance of dirt. I love gardening and I have studied the soil characteristics of the desert for many years. It would have been very useful to have such a Website in the days I was most active in building the soil in my garden so that it would grow vegetables on a consistent basis.

One of the challenges is the mechanics of the soil. It was most clay in the area where we lived, with a hard pan of caliche about 3 feet below the surface. I had to add a lot of sand, gypsum and iron to the soil just to break it down so that it wouldn't turn to adobe when it was dry. Here is a really good and really long article from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum by Joseph R. McAuliffe on Desert Soils.

Because of the alluvial nature of the soils in the Salt River Valley, there is never any lack of rocks. Add that to the fact that many of the suburban yards in the Valley have "desert landscaping" which consists almost entirely of large gravel or rocks, we always have something to throw close at hand.