Idaho · Deserts & Dry Basins
Where your water goes
Your sub-basin
Middle Snake-Boise
then
Columbia River
It arrives here
Pacific Ocean
West, down some of the steepest drainage on the continent, and then straight into the Pacific. These are the salmon rivers: five species run up them from the sea to spawn and die, and the carcasses carry ocean nitrogen back into the forest.
Basin 170501 (USGS hydrologic unit)
The river right now
100%
of the ten-year median for this date · 1 m³/s against 1 normally
normalAbout what it should be for the date. The river is doing its ordinary work — sorting gravel, feeding its banks and moving fish around at the pace everything in it is adapted to. It is rising — about 16% more water by the end of the week.
Under your feet
About 3 million years old — from the ice ages and since — the most recent chapter.
All the kinds of rock, and how each one forms →
Quaternary sedimentary · Quaternary
Sediments and sedimentary rocks (Pleistocene and Pliocene) · Pliocene
Bedrock and soil figures are modelled from national geological surveys and global soil mapping, at a resolution of a few hundred metres — right for the shape of a district, not for a particular garden. River discharge is modelled, not gauged. For anything that matters, dig a hole and look.
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Cenozoic sedimentary rocks · Pliocene
The soil it made
What that means
Easy ground for most vegetables and fruit. Iron and manganese start to get harder to reach at the top of this band, which shows up as yellowing between the veins on young leaves.
Happy here without a fight
Brassicas, beets, spinach, peas, lilacs, clematis and most herbs. Hydrangeas come out pink.
If you want the rest
Leave it. If acid-lovers are the point, grow them in containers or a made-up bed rather than fighting the whole garden.
Working it
A balance of sand, silt and clay — the texture that holds enough water to matter and still drains, which is why loam is the one everybody wants.