Dropped 3" over the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, a nearby fountain / bird bath dropped 1/4" mostly from evaporation.
The replacement trees, left to right: Washington Navel, Minneola Tangelo, Gold Nugget Mandarin, Owari Satsuma Mandarin.
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Ok, now I have 4 craters 32" deep. One inch of water is still standing in the 1st hole. We’re bringing in an auger and drilling down a few feet until we find drainage, then back filling with gravel.
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Wow. That is some really bad draining soil, Richard. Amazing how different our soils are! Good idea, and great idea to check was was going on.
Patty
Good Lord, those are huge, deep holes. Surely you didn’t dig those by shovel only? I know it’s clay, but I’m sure you hit your share of rocks too. Maybe it’s easier to dig since y’all had all that rain? That’d take me a day to dig just one of those craters.
It’s just in that one area. I had soil geologist there yesterday and he agreed it was layers and layers of fill brought in to fill the mini-arroyo in that part of the yard when the houses were built in '60. Only two of those layers were from local soils, the 3 heavy clay layers are most likely from grading alongside the San Luis Rey River.
Yes … well, I also have a two-wheeled 8 cu.ft. wheelbarrow.
Zero rocks.
It took me a 4 days to dig the first one. It took two laborers 1 day to dig the other three. 
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OK, so you’ve got an 8 cu ft wheelbarrow? But, you’re digging with a one sq ft shovel!
I know you guys had lots of rain this winter, but that soil already looks hard. I bet if you tried to do this last year, it would’ve been get out the jack hammer time.
Maybe 1/4 cu.ft.
It was pretty much “slice” and toss into the wheelbarrow.
Or a mini excavator!
Well today I got the really bad news about these holes which I’ll continue talking about in the Home Renovation II thread.