hardpan

It's better to design for in-place infiltration instead of run-off by remediating hardpan, imprinting, contour earthworks, etc.

The builder brought in dirt and spread it over the hardpan to make the lot look attractive.

I was drilling the holes and the auger was bouncing off the hardpan, so I rented a jackhammer...

Under streets there was zero land cost, just the dig and shaft cost through the clay, garavel and hardpan that underlies Toronto.

Even continuously mowed lawns are nearly so due to subsoil hardpan.

Where my garden is now was nothing but hardpan and rocks.

It would also be nice if we could find a way to fertilize without creating hardpan soils or fertilizer runoff into rivers/lakes/oceans.

Brother's property in Cupertino CA was built on hardpan.

Eventually we broke a hole through and even drilled another foot or so after that (the hardpan was just a couple of inches thick).

I think devops was defunct once the asphalt hit the hardpan.

Ultimately it was futile: all the rain (what there is in CA) would run across the hardpan and drain through the holes we drilled that day.

When I started, it was nothing but rocks and hardpan.

The page ends with an interesting description of the irrigation-from-below system ("seepage irrigation") enabled by the sand-on-hardpan conditions.

As I understand it the problem is rather (as the article disccusses and as others here have commented) the long-term damage to deeper layers of the soil, resulting in "hardpan" [1].

"Elizabeth", in TFA, did the same, but noted that the plants could not grow roots into the hardpan layer below the mixture.

Once you go into production with tens of thousands of users and up, with SLA's driven by how many commas of money going up in smoke per minute...yeah, illusions of "pure" domain knowledge driving understanding of function dictating code form evaporate like a drop of distilled water on the Death Valley desert hardpan in the middle of summer.