[Moonshine132435]

Yesterday it finally seemed to have been dry for long enough that I could get out to my plot and dig over a few patches. I have one of the last plots on our site so it's at the bottom of the hill, but it hasn't rained in two weeks so I hoped it would finally have dried up enough to get some work done.

I was half right; the soil had dried up enough that I could walk on it, but it was still heavy and stuck to my shovel. More worryingly, at less than one spade's depth I have started to hit some nice, sticky grey clay. So even if it dries out some more, the soil is always going to be a little heavy and prone to waterlogging.

My question is this: I have access to quite a lot of gravel; do any of you have experience with putting a little gravel into your beds to aid drainage, or does it just put nicks in your spades and make your parsnips to grow funny?

[ThePragmatist]

I am in what sounds like the same position. At the bottom of the slope where all the water collects.

I have heard of people adding sand to improve the drainage in heavy clay, which might incorporate more easily into the soil structure than gravel.

I would say that improving the soil drainage probably only helps if the water has somewhere to go. If there is somewhere you can channel the water you could dig a ditch, be careful of people falling in it though, or a french drain which at it's most basic is a ditch filled in with gravel, perhaps with some perforated pipe in it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_drain).

If you have nowhere for the water to go, then you might want to dig a soakaway, which is a big hole filled with rubble, that acts as a place for the water to sit and slowly disperse into the soil.

I ended up digging a ditch and soakaway on my plot and I am also trying to raise up the lower lying beds by adding lots of compost to keep them above high tide. My plot was a new one made from an old school playing field, so I had plenty of stones and rubble to fill my soak away and I continue to fill in my ditch with the stones I pick out of my beds.

Cheers!

[aelf]

I agree. My plot flooded when I first got it but luckily we have a deep drainage ditch on the perimeter of the site so I dug a trench 3ft deep and the length of the plot into the drainage ditch. This was backfilled with all the rubble and rubbish that I dug out of my growing areas and eventually covered with soil and grass.

It's never flooded since, although this winter the ground was very wet just below the surface.

[Kleftiwallah]

Just a comment,

but if you use scalpings, the larger stones are usually coated with clay particles and when it rains these particles may wash off and form thier own 'hard pan' of impenetrable clay layer.   Cleaned gravel should help.

Cheers,   Tony.

[Moonshine132435]

Thanks for all your views, I was afraid that the most likely option was going to be some sort of drainage ditch, it makes the most sense. I'm trying to avoid that due to the layout of the site and, having a seven month old baby at home plus another on the way means my time is going to be quite limited this year.

It looks like I'm going to have to work around the poor drainage by starting to build raised beds.