Once we dug our holes we soon began to discover a serious issue.
There was a dampening at their bases and then they began to fill with water.
This indicated that although the soil drains well the local water table is very high.
The hunt was on to discover where the water was coming from that was artificially elevating the local water table.
Seepage from the nearby drainage canal is a known issue but was never suspected of having such a massive impact. The irrigation water storage dam was also found to have leaks at its joins. We would need to isolate all of the water ingress sources and mitigate them ASAP before planting the trees.
With the deadline for tree stock to be collected fast approaching this would be no easy task.
The supply of water needed to be cut off immediately and the process of dewartering the 3 hectare field commenced.
