Curing My "Bed-Wetting" Garden
(Page 2 of 2)
May/June 1985
By Alden Stahr
Spring Test
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The real test came the next spring — and my garden flunked! March, April and May each brought the highest monthly rainfall on record. The two drainpipes ran continuously, and the ditches between the rows shunted off more water, but still the garden was a bedwetting morass.
I figured I'd have to replace my shallow ditch at the top of the garden — there was no way it could accommodate the sheet watering produced by the hillside above it. So, starting as early as possible in spring, I dug an 18-inch-deep trench just inside the uphill fence. Sure enough, every few feet I discovered rivulets of water coursing along the top of the clay. They all combined to form a small stream that my new ditch diverted out of the garden.
At last the problem was solved. The two pipelines, the between-bed ditches, and my new above-garden trench drained the excess water so efficiently that vegetables grew profusely where they'd failed altogether the year before. As an example, my sodden first-year plot yielded only 4 1/2 pounds of shelled peas, but after completing my "waterproofing," I harvested plenty for fresh eating and put 15 pounds in the freezer!
A Gardener's Work is Never Done!
Although the top-of-the-garden ditch worked fine through its initial growing season, the subsequent fall rains and winter freezes made its walls collapse in many places. That not only blocked drainage flow but also caused several of my garden's fence posts to tilt dangerously.
More work! This time I was determined to make a big ditch — about 80 feet long, 2 feet deep and 2 feet wide — and to set it well above the garden. It would have taken me almost forever to dig that more durable trench, so I felled some trees for a friend in exchange for his scooping out the ditch with a backhoe. I watched in happy amazement as in one hour he did a job that would have taken me weeks with a spade.
No sooner was that big ditch finished than underground water started to trickle down it. So nowadays, with that hillside-clearing ditch, my between-bed gutters and the underground drainage pipes, my garden has finally stopped wetting its beds-for good!
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