Indiana · Central Hardwoods & Interior Plateaus
Fall · September 16, 2026
Indianapolis, Indiana
Where your water goes
Your sub-basin
Patoka-White
then
Ohio River
then
Mississippi River system
It arrives here
Gulf of Mexico
This water joins the largest drainage in North America and travels south for thousands of kilometres to the Gulf. What runs off the fields upstream of you arrives there too, which is why a dead zone the size of a small country forms off Louisiana each summer.
Basin 051202 (USGS hydrologic unit)
The river right now
182%
of the ten-year median for this date · 19 m³/s against 10.4 normally
highRunning high for the date. Water will be pushy and coloured, fish will be tucked into the slack water at the edges and behind obstructions, and crossings that are normally easy are not. It is rising — about 23% more water by the end of the week.
Under your feet
About 541 million years old — from the age of the first forests, amphibians and reptiles.
All the kinds of rock, and how each one forms →
Paleozoic sedimentary rocks · Paleozoic
Devonian sedimentary · Devonian
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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Muscatatuck Group · Devonian
· Devonian
The soil it made
What that means
The sweet spot for a vegetable garden. Nearly every nutrient is at its most available somewhere in this band, which is why it is the number every soil guide tells you to aim at.
Happy here without a fight
Almost everything: tomatoes, beans, squash, lettuce, apples, most perennials and most lawn grasses.
If you want the rest
Nothing needed. Compost keeps it here; heavy lime would push it past useful.
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.