California · Mediterranean California
Where your water goes
Your sub-basin
Central California Coastal
then
Pacific Ocean Seaboard
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 180600 (USGS hydrologic unit)
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 →
Cenozoic sedimentary rocks · Quaternary
Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits · 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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Oligocene sedimentary · Oligocene
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
Fine and fertile, holding water better than sand without clay's stickiness. It caps over in heavy rain, so it wants a mulch or a cover crop rather than being left bare.