For Kids · The land and the sky · The ground under you
Maseru · Highveld & Drakensberg
Try it
Drag the spade down, or tap Dig deeper, through the leaves, the living topsoil and the subsoil, all the way to the bedrock that is really down there.
About 0 cm down
The grass
the top of the ground
Under the grass is a whole hidden world. Drag the spade down — or press Dig deeper — to find out what is down there.
Layer 0 of 5
It takes hundreds of years to make one centimetre of topsoil. The depths are typical — every place is different — and the ruler is squashed at the bottom so the rock fits on the screen.
Say it like this
Go outside: Dig a small hole in the garden and count how many worms live in one shovelful — then put them all back and fill it in.
The river right now
620%
of the ten-year median for this date · 10.4 m³/s against 1.7 normally
very highWell above normal. The river is moving gravel and wood, the banks are undercut and unreliable, and this is the state in which people drown. Watch it from the bank. It is rising — about 16% more water by the end of the week.
Under your feet
About 252 million years old — from the age of the dinosaurs.
All the kinds of rock, and how each one forms →
sedimentary · Triassic
· Triassic
Mesozoic sedimentary rocks · Triassic
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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Try it
Drag the spade down, or tap Dig deeper, through the leaves, the living topsoil and the subsoil, all the way to the bedrock that is really down there.
About 0 cm down
The grass
the top of the ground
Under the grass is a whole hidden world. Drag the spade down — or press Dig deeper — to find out what is down there.
Layer 0 of 5
It takes hundreds of years to make one centimetre of topsoil. The depths are typical — every place is different — and the ruler is squashed at the bottom so the rock fits on the screen.
Say it like this
Go outside: Dig a small hole in the garden and count how many worms live in one shovelful — then put them all back and fill it in.
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.