Saturday, August 2, 2008

Drainage Issues and Compost Corral

This is a closeup of the make shift trellis I made to keep the melons out of the water.

It's just part of living here. Unbelievable rain amounts. It doesn't just drizzle, it dumps buckets and buckets of rain for days and days. Unless the pumps (those are the huge pumps they use to keep our area from becoming a lake) are running, the rain quickly fills the ditches covers the road and creeps up the hill our home is built on.
The water drains off fairly quickly once it stops raining or they turn the pumps on. Yet parts of my yard and garden keep very deep puddles until there is enough let up in the rain for the sun to either evaporate it or the water table to go down. The hot sun evaporating the water from underneath the veggies is murder on the vegetables. They get steamed right in the garden. At times the ground is completely saturated and the only place for it to drain is through the drainage ditch and into the swamp.

So...I believe it is time for some drainage issues to be addressed. I am thinking of putting in drainage pipes in my potager (they are the red lines.). This is a drawing of what it will look like eventually. The paths will either be mulched or covered with gravel. We are implementing each stage as time and money allows. I'm glad we had these rains recently to reveal the drainage flaws in our garden before we have to tear anything apart to fix the problem.
The following is a video of the compost bin we are going to build. His "compost corral" will be a much better fit for our land size. It's such a simple idea yet brilliant!

3 comments:

Egghead said...

Before we moved here we had a composting barrel and I loved it. However, we left it for my mother in law who moved into our old house. I think this one looks so easy to do.

Althea Tumlin said...

How is the drainage now? Looking at the pictures, I think that it needs some professional fix. If these problems are not addressed, the drainage flaws will be more apparent when the rainy season comes, and it can pose some problems to the residences nearby.

Darryl Iorio said...

Thanks for sharing this post, Kristi. Your drainage system idea is good, especially if it can be useful to your orchard. But I must agree with Althea; it would be better if you seek some professional advice. Even though the plan was good, we should consider the interest of the others.

Darryl Iorio