I used to laugh at the idea of using a soil probe for diagnosis

For years I thought you could tell everything from the leaves and bark. Then I had this sugar maple in Charlotte that kept dropping branches no matter what we did. My boss made me take a core sample with a soil probe about 18 inches down. Turns out the whole root zone was bone dry and compacted like concrete, even though the surface looked fine and we'd been watering. We aerated and did deep root watering for a season, and the tree came back strong. Now I use that probe on every iffy job. What's a tool you guys thought was pointless until it proved you wrong?

2 comments

2 Comments

phoenix_burns262mo ago

Yeah, that line about the root zone being bone dry under the surface hits home. I read a case study once about a row of street trees that all failed, and the post-mortem found a buried layer of construction debris just a foot down that blocked everything. You just can't see that stuff. My cheapo moisture meter felt like a toy until it showed me a potted plant was actually waterlogged at the bottom while the top was dry. Changed how I water everything now.

faith_perez2mo ago

Forget the meter, just lift the pot.