here's a 30second video showing the ground I have to work with for my veg garden. from the soil test it looks like my soil has alot of sand, but clearly has some drainage problems. But this is the first week of spring and all the snow is melting... I plan to till that ground in order to extend the raised bed, and so the bed will sit ontop of the boggy ground shown in the video... any tips/advice before I get going?
I was thinking you could add some chunkier amendments when you till. Pine bark mulch, rough compost, etc. Some leaf mold could be advantageous.
Its spring ! Every ones ground is soggy ! That it retains water may be a blessing in July and August !
I got a bag of leaves from last fall, and I have a compost pile that's half broken down. I guess I'll dig a trench right in the middle of where the bed will sit and fill it with leaves and very rough compost. would it be crazy to throw in gravel in said trench? lol. it's pretty bad, the video doesn't do it justice, and i think it got worse by the end of the day, it's becoming a big puddle at this point, it's going to rain hard tomorrow, and i suspect it will look like there is a small lake in my back yard! this house has a swamp pump which runs like 10 times a day at this point. I think the land sits a bit low in relation to everywhere else, and so all the groundwater from the area collects and slowly drains here.
Ha ! You should have seen my yard yesterday,, I could have stocked it with fish ! I assume you live in a development with other houses around ! Does everyone have the same problem ?
there is an area that is filled with gravel, that probably has reasonable drainage. i guess i could dig a trench and put a perforated pipe in the ground, hoping to redirect some of the water into the area with gravel. hmmm... i should probably wait and see if its really that bad, maybe it'll dry up and stay dry once all the spring melt is done.
@adam.ca those are exactly the problems i have and posted about. Still thinking about what to do though..for now, I'll continue concentrating on making "no dig' flower beds to cut out some of the lawn.
Perforated pipe would help if you have a short growing season and need to start early !! Like a French Drain !!
I think ill be ok. i was out of town for a few days. and its been cloudy and raining for 3 days. the ground is muddy but its much better then the inch of water it had when the snow was melting. I think they purposely put in a lot of sand in the soil and put an area filled with gravel to help drain all the water that we get here. anyway, I think that if i do nothing special I should be OK, it'll just be very boggy / flooded for the first couple weeks in spring. and who knows maybe with the addition of raised beds will help with drainage a little too. so the plan now is to put in the raised beds and not worry about it.
oh and i think ill dig a trench down the middle and fill it with very rough compost this should i think this will help feed the soil hold onto moister and let the excess water drain. and it'll get rid of the compost pile i have, which is good because i wanted to redo my compost pile area to use the wood pallets I've gathered and that's hard to do with a big pile of compost in the way. thanks for the suggestion
