{"id":2248,"date":"2007-05-12T22:11:09","date_gmt":"2007-05-13T03:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.1.5\/gardens\/gardenlog\/?p=2248"},"modified":"2017-07-19T14:37:12","modified_gmt":"2017-07-19T19:37:12","slug":"caliche","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/garden-house-project\/caliche\/","title":{"rendered":"Caliche"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Angelina (of fab <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dustpanalley.com\/\">Dustpan Alley<\/a> fame) asked me what <i>caliche<\/i> is. As it turns out, I&#8217;m not actually sure that I&#8217;m using the correct term but I refer to the yellow hardpan layer of clay that&#8217;s beneath our more benevolent blackland prairie clay as <i>caliche<\/i>. It&#8217;s common in all the places I&#8217;ve lived in the southwest US. My mother grew up in New Mexico and that&#8217;s what she called it. Maybe it&#8217;s just <i>hardpan<\/i>, which my online dictionary defines as &#8220;a hardened impervious layer, typically of clay, occurring in or below the soil and impairing drainage and plant growth.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The University of Arizona has an informative article on <a href=\"http:\/\/cals.arizona.edu\/pubs\/garden\/mg\/soils\/caliche.html \">conquering home yard caliche<\/a>. In it they describe it as, &#8220;a layer of soil in which the soil particles have been cemented together by lime (calcium carbonate, CaCO3). Caliche is usually found as a light-colored layer in the soil or as white or cream-colored concretions (lumps) mixed with the soil.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yep. That sounds just like the awful stuff that I have been fighting all week to keep out of my garden.<\/p>\n<p><img width=\"320\" src=\"http:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/photos\/320\/caliche1.jpg\" alt=\"Zanthan Gardens\" \/><br \/><i>When damp, the texture is like brown sugar.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><img width=\"320\" src=\"http:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/photos\/320\/caliche2.jpg\" alt=\"Zanthan Gardens\" \/><br \/><i>When you walk on it, caliche flattens and hardens like cement. Can you make out the footprints?<\/i><\/p>\n<p><img width=\"320\" src=\"http:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/photos\/320\/caliche3.jpg\" alt=\"Zanthan Gardens\" \/><br \/><i>When it dries out, caliche forms clods as hard as rocks.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img width=\"320\" src=\"http:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/photos\/320\/caliche4.jpg\" alt=\"Zanthan Gardens\" \/><br \/><i>The pile in the driveway has doubled in size since I took this photo. I&#8217;m still trying to get it out of the lawn.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2248"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5457,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2248\/revisions\/5457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}