I suggest that after gathering a natural resource (soil, water, sand, the clays etc) if it is part of a quality node upon gathering you are able to see the quality of all the other squares in the node.
Maybe this can be a toggle feature if you don't want the screen clutter.
However, since quality nodes aren't symmetrical it's a pain trying to track down how high they are. Tracking them down is tedious and by no means fun engaging game play. I do see the need to just not show the quality of everything by walking though. So I suggest that after a player has proven via actions (digging a unit of soil for instance) they should be able to see the quality of the rest of the node easily without all the monotony.