There truly is something utterly satisfying about watering your trees every week, let alone watching the water seep into the dry soil. It’s also a great way to deliver the much needed TLC to our plants. However, as you watch this particular process, you have no clue regarding what is happening underneath that soil surface. There is a quite common issue which lurks underground and it’s rather hard to spot – it’s called compacted soil.

With this in mind, we are going to provide you with a few remedies for this particular problem, but before that, it’s important to map out the signs and why you should account for them.

What are the signs?

Now, as you walk or when you use some heavy machinery such as a lawn mower, for instance, the ground is going to get in thick packs of soil under the weight and pressure, which is going to make it rather hard. With this in mind, the difficulties that are going to present themselves include:

·         Impaired water flow causing the roots of the trees to dry

·         The roots won’t get enough nutrients which is eventually going to slow the growth

·         The tree isn’t going to thrive because of the aforementioned.

How to spot them?

If the tree that or the plant that you are taking care of fails to grow at the necessary speed and convenience, you might want to make sure that you look for the signs of compaction. They usually include lack of grass, dense and hard surface and many more. In order to diagnose this issue, all you will need is a screwdriver. If the unit doesn’t manage to go through the soil without an effort, then you are most certainly having this issue. You can also simply take out a chunk of the soil – if it’s compacted it’s going to look dry, gray and rather dull.

One of the things that you need to take into account is that you shouldn’t really plant the tree until you’ve taken care of the problem. Thus, it is essential to call in tree care specialists to do a soil analysis before you plant the trees. It will help you fertilize it properly.

How to fix it?

In order to fix this considerable issue, the first thing that you need to do is to mix compost into 8 to 10 inches of soil on top. This is going to add a lot of nutrients but make sure not to go for volcano mulching as its most certainly not going to help you a lot. Add carthworms as they are attracted to mulch and toing to go through the compacted soil, restoring the proper flow of water and of air.

However, if the problem is more serious, you might want to go ahead and aerate the entire thing or go for vertical mulching approach.