Close to giving up .. Moved from General Chat
I originally posted this in the General Chat section but on looking at this site a bit more I think it should be placed here so I have moved it.
I apologise in advance for the size of this post.
Hi guys, Im new to this site, just happened to stumble across it on google.
My boyfriend and I took on an allotment in melstock road Birmingham in late June last year.
The plot itself hadn't been worked in around three years we have since been told, but we could have guessed that when we first saw it ! Grass upto our waists half the plot was covered in brambles over six feet in short it was going to be a challenge.
We went in with all the best intentions and strimmed all the grass down and removed all the brambles, this wasn't easy as we came across a huge mass of rotten, half rooten wood, plasic sheeting, and a mass of concrete and rubbish.
However we stood happily and looked on as we surveyed our cleared plot and then came the rains !!!!! ... Our plot is an a slight incline but is most definately not the lowest lying plot on the park, however all the rain water seemed to collect in our plot and given to the fact that it has predominantly clay soil it just sat on the surface and gathered in what I can only call a slow flowing stream all the way to the bottom of our plot.
Without exageration I could walk the lengh and width of our plot in wellington boots and the water never dropped below my ankles and in a few places came as high a mid calf !!!!!!!!!
We began by trying to rectify this by digging a few trenchs a 2 foot deep trench straight through the middle of our plot and then another at the base of our plot. This has however not releived the problem as much as we had hoped. So we went ahead and placed a row of Willow at the bottom of our plot to try and draw it off this way, the willow has taken and we are hoping it works but we still have an incredibly sodden plot and too be honest we cant do any work on it atall.
I am completely frustrated by the whole situation and am thinking of just cutting our loses .. we worked so hard and wanted to have an allotment that we could grow on by the Spring but I dont know what else to do.
Has anybody else had this problem or does anybody have any ideas.
I apologise for the lengh of this thread.
Sarah
i have seen this before and it orives ti be a gift rather then a curse. what usually happens after a few yeas of a plot being untouhed is that plants grow and die, grow and die and so on creating a layer of plants which become compacted. to remedy this you need manure and lots of it. you have to double dig the manure into the ground, this is when you dig a hole, fill it with manure and and top it off with the soil you dug up, try not to dig too deep and bring up too much clay, the manure will absorb the water and break up the soil and clay. manure is great at retaining moisture and of course providing valuable nutrients.
hope this helps
why not build a herring bone drainage system to sort the water problems, sounds like youve done most of the hard work by digging a trench down the middle if you dig trenches off this in herring bone fashion place perforated pipe in these connected to the main trench finishing at a soakaway to the bottom of the allotment place terram or weed barrier over the top of the pipes and lots of gravel fill then with soil it will do the trick hard work i know i did it and its is working a treat.you can get the pipe from any builders merchant
you've come so far, don't give up now!
can't you raise some parts up, that's what we did. Our plots still soaking but we have raised beds that we can plant. In fact our whole plot is made up of them, one of our raised beds is over 16ft long and we also have 3 raised bed tables, made fom old pallets and 2 old baths. We have covered the rest of the plot in wood chippings which you can get delivered free to your site if you get in touch with a tree felling company. We also built a lovely pond.
Not only do the raised beds make sense for us because we have a double plot and the tide had definately come in lol but it also cuts out the digging too which can be a huge bonus lol.
All I can say is you've done most of the hard work please don't give up!
raised beds is definatly the way to go and if your allowed live stock maybe a few ducks lol, all joking aside stick with it it will be worth it in the end..