Getting the soil ready for planting

Apart from the very basic care our garden has not received any TLC from us since we moved in as we concentrated on the house first. The previous owner does not seem to have been a gardener either as there are no plants (unless you count the three daffodils that pop up each spring) and one dead holly bush! The only tree in the garden is one flowering cherry which is right at the back fence. Other than that we havee nothing. There are signs of where 2 boarders were, but these have now grassed over (just their dents in the grass showing their position)

The garden suffers very bad flooding from the primary school next door & I have been advised to dig a channel along the edge, fill with gravel & re-cover to help this.

My question is, in the books & mags I have been reading, I should be getting ready to fork in large amounts of well rotted manure to bulk up the soil ready to take plants but in other books (relating to the poor drainage) they advise mixing in grit to help it drain better.

Do I do both or does one contradict the other? Or am I going about this wrong ?

Thanks in advance for your advice on this and any other points you think I need to know as a newbie & novice gardener!



PS Thought I had better add.....I have made the school aware of the flooding problem caused by the drain & the way the playground fall - it diverts rain water off the yard to a small grid right above our garden! However this has now been going on for a few years (the school is very unwilling to make the big spend required to fix the problem, they just keep getting the draing cleaned etc). This was another reson we delayed doing work on the garden, however I am now fed up of having nothing growing each year - it looks like we don't care about the garden! so I am now trying anything to at least allow me to try growing stuff at last hence the "channel filled with grit" idea. Will this even work?

 

Hi Toni,


I think what you are talking about is a soakaway-an area fill with rubble or sharp gravel and over the top of it a layer I imagine at least a foot deep of topsoil through which the overspill would literally soak away. These do work but will involve a lot of work-if you want a nice garden it will probably be necessary. It isn`t just a small channel you will need though-especially as you say it is a very large problem.

I thin you could also look at draining it away with underground drainage-but I know nothing about that but I know someone will be along to advise on that front.

You aren`t wrong about improving the soil structure but you will have to address the drainage issue first as anything you do to improve the soil will be wasted and could demoralise you.

 

Hi Digger and welcome. As Claire says, if you have a specific flooding problem you may need to make a drainage channel.

But to answer the general question of improving garden soil, what you need is good drainage and good retention of moisture. How you get it depends on where you start from.

If you are on sandy soil, you will already have good drainage. So all you need is plenty of organic material to retain moisture that the plants can access. Horse manure is excellent at this, but you can use any type of manure. You can also use peat, compost (your own or purchased), leaves, old newspapers etc. Its always best if they are completely rotted, but even part rotted material is good.

If you are on clay as I am, the problem is different. Clay particles are very small - about 1/10000th of the size of a sand particle. Because of their small size they clog up and you get bad drainage. In this case you still need all the organic material that you can get your hands on, as decomposed organic material binds the clay particles into larger particles and so will help the drainage. But you can help the drainage by adding horticultural grit (I use 10 mil gravel in a one ton bag from a builders merchant - its not quite as good as horticultural grit but it is much cheaper). You can also add sharp (must be SHARP and not soft yellow sand), which you can also get from a builders yard. Because the grit and sand are sharp they don't fit well together and consequently leave air gaps which allow for drainage channels.

 

That is some great advice guys, Thank You. Peter, the ground is what I can only describe as thick mud (so clay based I guess). It's the original nasty soil that was here when it was a building site. Infact, what few efforts I did previously make to plant a few things often resulted in uprooting a fair few half-enders so I know I must have my work cut out on the digging side!
I have already ordered a compost bin off the council, so should be able to get my own going ready for later on in the year.

As both yourself and Claire mentioned, the drainage will have to be my first task but it won't be until next Autumn now when I see if it has improved things as over summer is dries out nice and for 5 / 6 months we get a nice "normal" garden. It's only goes boggy when the blinking school floods us towards the back end of the year. I plan to start work on my own version on of open cast mines (one huge trench coming up!) this weekend and just hope we dont loose the jack russel down there :lol:

 

:D I think your Jack Russell would be an Asset, You know how they just love to dig..Good Luck with Drainage problem Digger :gnthb:

 

Digger - I just found this old post of mine http://www.gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=8892&highlight=improving+clay It doesn't touch on your specific flooding problem, but it illustrates a way of improving clay soil

The words clay show up in red as they are a key word for a search. They weren't in red in the original.

 

blinking eck!!! that's some digging Peter!!! looks fab after though - well worth it, I bet.

I hope by doing this trench work - think I will need to put one along the back fence and one down the left side of the garden as these are the worst points.
I have attached a couple of photos showing the garden as it stands now . . .hope this works



The school is at the back through the railings & you should just be able to see the two previous borders half way up the gaden seperating it into two halves (by the two small stone steps)

This second photo should show the problems with the school a bit better . . . . .



Water pours in through this part of the fence and down the side (past the dead holly bush) which is why I planned two trenches (one along the back, and one down this side)

 

There could be an argument for planting willow whips across the back, they are very greedy for water and could then be used as a screen if woven together.

 

The problem is because your garden is lower than the school playground. If you got 10 tons of soil & hardcore and piled it up along the fence, it would create a barrier so the the water would then flood the playground and the school would have to do something about it!!:hehe: :D :D
Sorry, probably not really practcal - but fun though :gnthb:

 

:lol: did think of that kind of thing, but someone went and made a blinking law about it
(apparently!) along the lines of you cant intentionally build a damn to stop water flow as to effect others - but it’s ok for them to flood me !!!

 

I`m not sure it sounds like it is intentional to be absolutely fair though Toni.

 

I would dig a trench along the fence and put some perforated drainage pipe in there, surrounded with gravel, then fill in. (We have left some "vertical columns" of gravel, and larger stone, in our backfill so that any surface water can easily find its way down). Running the tench down once side of your garden, downhill, can either connect to existing drains - or just act as a larger soakaway.

A hedge isn't going to ne able to deal with runoff water

 

On a more realistic level, we put land drains in. It is perforated pipe which is set underground about 30cm on a bed of gravel and soil and turf replaced on top. The trench gently slopes to the lowest level of the garden to a sump drain (a pit filled with rubble). This takes the majority but not all of the water as the pipe distributes it slowly along it's length.

 

Sorry kristen, just pipped me there - great minds and all that ...:D