Drainage test

I found a piece of land that I could afford that I'm thinking I'd like to buy with a looong term goal of having a hosta farm/garden/nursery. The reason I could afford it is that it didn't pass a perk test, which means there might be drainage problems. But obviously, a perk test checks for drainage at 8 ft, and plants aren't going to drown if drainage isn't good at 8 ft. What can I do to test the drainage that would matter - in the region that the plant roots would be growing? Thanks!

Do you know why it failed the perk test? Draining too fast or too slow can cause an site to fail a perk test. We nearly failed ours, the water drains so fast here on our river bed of a property.

Essentially all they do is dig a deep hole and measure how fast water poured into the hole was absorbed into the ground. Then give it a rate and compare that rating to their perameters.

So you could dig a hole too, as deep as you like, and watch how fast the water drains away. I don't think hosta will care too much about poor drainage at 8ft, unless there is some kind of seasonal problem like I get here with the water table rising and dropping.
Coeur D'Alene is lovely.

Dig a coffee-can size hole. Fill it with water. If the water drains within an hour, your drainage is good. Some people advocate not timing the draining of the water, but after the water is gone, fill the hole a second time with water and time the water drainage for the second fill. This is info I remember reading in various website posts and newspaper/magazine articles over the past couple of years. I have never done the test myself - I have heavy clay soil and know from experience it is slow draining. I do not know why there are 2 techinques which seem to contradict each other or which is the more accurate.

This message was edited Jun 4, 2006 11:42 PM

Ok, I will try it and see. Thanks for the advice!

Wet the ground and dig a hole and pick up the soil in your hand and squeeze it into a ball. It it remains a ball =clay, If it breaks into large clumps = clay + sand/loam, If it wont make a ball sand. All but solid clay is good. Check the soil types at different levels and location. If you can dig good if you can't bad. If you need a wrecking bar welcome to the Glacial deposits in the eastern NW.

I think the "fill the hole twice" method is for very dry soil. If the soil is dry it might easily absorb all of the water the first time even though drainage might be poor.