North Dakota · Prairies & Great Plains · sandstone country
Where your water goes
Your sub-basin
Upper Red (Nelson)
then
Nelson River
It arrives here
Hudson Bay
An enormous, cold, inland sea is the destination — water from here flows north rather than south, which surprises most people who look at a map for the first time. It is ice-covered for much of the year, so the whole system is on a short, violent, snowmelt-driven schedule.
Basin 090201 (USGS hydrologic unit)
Under your feet
About 101 million years old — from the age of the dinosaurs.
All the kinds of rock, and how each one forms →
Mesozoic sedimentary rocks · Late Cretaceous
Late Cretaceous sedimentary · Cenomanian
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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Belle Fourche-Skull Creek, Undivided · Early Cretaceous
The soil it made
What that means
Limey ground. Iron, manganese and zinc are chemically present but hard for roots to take up, so acid-loving plants go yellow between the veins no matter how much you feed them.
Happy here without a fight
Lavender, sage, thyme, clematis, lilac, brassicas, beets and most stone fruit.
If you want the rest
Chelated iron treats the symptom. Sulphur lowers pH but slowly and not permanently. The honest answer is to grow what suits it and put the blueberries in a pot.
Working it
Holds water and nutrients well and gives them up slowly. It is cold and late in spring, and it will set like concrete if you work it wet — so wait until it crumbles rather than smears.