Moon phase and digging a post hole

[Throwback]

You would think that a fella your age could at least dig a more rounded, smooth hole than that. I suggest you fill it up and start over.

Lord you sound like my OCD old lady

 

[j_seph]

Lord you sound like my OCD old lady

Well when I see proof that you can do it, I have around 30-50 I need dug!!!!

 

[specialk]

i've dug holes to set posts, plant trees, and buried a few dogs, but i've never ran out of dirt to fill back in......

 

[oldguy]

i've dug holes to set posts, plant trees, and buried a few dogs, but i've never ran out of dirt to fill back in......

Guess you got lucky and hit the moon just right!

 

[rosewood]

Learned a new tail today. Never heard of digging post holes by the moon. Guess I didn't grow up far enough in the woods...

 

[NCHillbilly]

Learned a new tail today. Never heard of digging post holes by the moon. Guess I didn't grow up far enough in the woods...

Old people around here wouldn't pick their nose or peel an apple unless the signs were right.

I remember one old lady got literally mad at my dad one time because he was planting taters in the worst wrong sign. He said his signs said that he was off work that day and it wasn't raining. She said he wouldn't have a single tater make anything. We had taters the size of footballs that year. Hers were small and knotty, and half of them rotted in the ground. He never let her live that down.

 

[Throwback]

So I guess y’all millennials won’t believe that moon phase will affect plants coming back after you bush hog a field either will you?

 

[AugustaDawg]

Lord you sound like my OCD old lady

Had a teacher one time say he would give 100 pts extra credit if we went home and dug 1/2 of a hole. I told him the next day that I had done it, and he said there's no way. It would still be a hole, not a half. I said I covered it 1/2 way back up! Son of a gun never did give me that 100. And I needed it!!

 

[NCHillbilly]

I think that if you dig a hole a foot wide, a foot long, and a foot deep, you'll get a cubic foot of dirt, regardless of the moon phase. If it is in a place where the soil has been previously compacted and all the airspaces mashed out of it, you could theoretically fluff that dirt back up to be slightly more than a cubic foot. I don't think the moon phase matters, unless a heavy enough chunk of the moon falls on it and mashes all the airspaces out of it. That's just my opinion, and I'm stickin' to it. You can call me a crazy millenial all you want to.

 

[Throwback]

https://www.farmersalmanac.com/calendar/best-days/outdoor-chores/dig-holes/

 

[oldguy]

Thought about this while cutting the grass. Everytime you needed to dig a fighting hole in a hurry _ there was ALWAYS too much dirt!

 

[BriarPatch99]

Dig near the New Moon ....You'll have to hunt dirt to fill the hole back up....

Dig near the Full Moon ....and you can't put the dirt back in the hole ...


Now ....that is not just a "old folks saying" ....I have proved it time and time again to many people....

 

[Oldstick]

This thread is a hoot. My experience with post holes is I rented an auger some 10 or 15 years ago. I got the cheaper "one man" type with a 2 cycle engine. This was a backyard wood fence around 25-30 holes. All I know is this 50 year old man (at the time) could only handle about 4 or 5 holes at a time with this contraption. 4 holes then go lay down in the AC for at least 30 minutes to recover. Yep faster, than manual diggers but still the same amount of total energy required. Contraption was like wrestling a 10 foot gator to hold it vertical then pull it back out of the hole.

But I don't recall any shortage of dirt filling around the posts.

 

[Para Bellum]

I just dig my post holes in the winter.

 

[Gary Mercer]

You know if your throw a half sack of concrete mix in the hole, you will probably have some dirt left over.
Just saying.......

 

[KyDawg]

It this phenomenon why there is so much dirt on the top of a Fire Ant hill.

 

[Throwback]

You know if your throw a half sack of concrete mix in the hole, you will probably have some dirt left over.
Just saying.......

City folks use cement to put a post in

 

[JustUs4All]

Do city folk not put rocks in their cement to make it go farther like country folk do?

 

[Gary Mercer]

Just buy the Quick Crete gravel mix. Suppose you "Country boys" don't drive some 20 penny nails in at right angles to help hold it. I grew up on a farm in coastal SC. Soil was real sandy, and the water table was at 4 feet unless we had a bunch of rain. Some times I would swear that the posts would grow roots.
Best fence posts were red cedar trees, but they took a while.

 

[dirtnap]

The reason that it seems like there is dirt leftover some times and not others has nothing to do with the moon phase. The reason is the grain size particles of the dirt you are digging. Sandy soils have larger particles than clayey soils. Residual sandy soils have probably up to 10-30% air voids. Once you dig it out and replace it and compact it then you’ve raised the air voids percentage. By doing this, and the fact the post is taking up space where soil was you’ll have soil left over.
In clayey silty soils, it is the opposite. Clay has smaller grain sizes and less residual air voids. When it’s disturbed and replaced, you can compact the grains of soil tighter than the residual state.
Another thing to consider is the soils moisture content. The soil has an optimum moisture content. If it’s dry when it’s dug, then gets wet it’ll compact tighter up to a certain point. If it’s too wet it will not compact as good as it would at a lower moisture content. If the moon phase had anything to do with soils, then nothing would stand up due to the ground constantly heaving and shrinking.
After 30 years of being in the geotechnical business, that’s about all I know.....Dirt

You can’t be giving out reasoning?