Arizona · Deserts & Dry Basins · river deposits country
Where your water goes
Your sub-basin
Santa Cruz
then
Colorado 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 150503 (USGS hydrologic unit)
The river right now
444%
of the ten-year median for this date · 1.8 m³/s against 0.4 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 dropping, roughly 75% over the week ahead.
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 surficial deposits, undivided · Gelasian
Cenozoic sedimentary rocks · Miocene
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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Quaternary sedimentary · Quaternary
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
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.