The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Techniques and skills => Topic started by: ambriel on February 03, 2011, 03:18:02 pm
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Our land was form many years part of a much larger croft and local people have told me how it was very productive, but when a new road was built across it and a new water main installed the land drains were destroyed, hence why it's a bit boggy.
The soil itself is very peaty in consistency and seems to hold water naturally. This is compounded by a large section of well established reeds which the pigs are starting to make progress with.
I've dug a few ditches that channel away what water gets into them but a lot of it just doesn't seem to move far from where it falls, despite the land being on a gentle slope.
Basically, I wondered what I could do to improve the soil by reducing the amount of water it retains?
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Depending on how much ground you're trying to bring up to snuff, you could sand it for better drainage. Not feasible for larger plots, but can work on a small scale.
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We have peaty soil but we got a contractor in to drain the land. It took him two days and it looked like the Somme but was worth it. Also ask your local agricultural agency for advice, they can test the soil and advise on liming ,grants for improvements etc. Also the main thing is dont overstock and leave your best fields without a mouse on all winter as you will just have a quagmire by spring.We leave our hay field and our good grazing field empty and the sheep are on the hill all winter. That way there is good grass for hay and lambing time. We have a bed rocky part where we intend to keep pigs as they will literally sink in peat when it is worked up. The cruelest thing I ever saw with pigs was some literally trying to kep their necks up in a peat run. They were fed on boards laid on the mud and they were at head height. My veg plot however is very fertile as it is peat based with brought in sandy soil and manure mixed in. Water does stand on peat soil till it drains and with winters up here there is a lot of water so the best advice I can give for now is keep stock to a minimum till you are sorted.
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Thanks for the replies, folks.
It's quite a small piece of land - only half an acre - and we keep half a dozen hens plus three pigs on it.
I did wonder about adding sand - we're coastal so have access to plenty of the stuff - but don't have any idea how much to add, per sq metre.
Being west coast there are no 'local' agencies to call upon.
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3 pigs on 1/2 acre it must be reasonable. our two had to be pulled out of there 1/2 acre because it was so deep. don't know how you could drain it well as the pigs will wreck any ditch or drain you will put in. since the council decided to drain the road into a old non functioning drain the top field has become a bog. it was just at the gate the first two winters but now we will need to put fresh ditches in and reseed an acre or two.
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Thanks Paul,
They're only Kunes so not so heavy on the land as other breeds, but they are making a good job of the rushes.
Unfortunately it's the lower part ofthe plot that is the worst, which is also where their ark is situated. If I can stick it out till the summer I'll get a small digger in and put some trenches and drains down, and see what happens.
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same thinking here. i would not fancy putting a small digger in there at the moment.
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I've heard (not seen it done mind) that the drainage trench should be across the top or higher end of the field as draining from the bottom would be endless. If you also dug trenches along the sides you would end up with a giant raised bed of finest, fertile peat.
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If the fields are flat that is what they do here, make the fields into giant raised beds of grass. Mine are on a slope so ones go across the top and then herring bone to the bottom. One ditch has run so fast with water it has turned into a burn and is a mans height deep!
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Thanks, I think that's going to be the trick. The ground is a gentle slope with the boggiest bits being at the bottom, but with a few further up where there appear to be slight depressions in the slope.
I'll put one trench across the top and channel this off to the sides and down to where a burn drains another section.
I've got a couple of bags of bark chippings sitting in the shed. Would spreading these on the muddiest spots help soak up some of the water or would it only make matters worse?
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I can't see mulch doing any good but you could try willow or other trees that are good at taking up water.
Have you considered a hedgerow, with lots of willow, along the windward side?
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if its peat then i dont see bark chippings working. if you had lots of small branches you could make a floating path.
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Those depressions could be a depression in the bedrock which hold water like a basin, there is nothing much you can do about that, they even maybe a spring head.We have a boggy area at the bottom of the hill, it is just a flood plain area and you cant drain a flood plain as that is the lowest point. Willows thrive in wet land but dont dry it up. We wanted to plant hundreds of trees along our burn but they said no as it was an important habitat in its own right and I could claim a grant for doing nothing! If you have a peat soil you must look after your grass, grazing grass is not natural for peat and will just slime away on the wet, acid soil in winter and the weeds will grow especially dock and ragwort. Weeds grow faster than grass!
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Following on from Hermit's post, you need to know where the water is coming from first. I assumed it was merely surface water (rain) assisted by a slight rise in the ground. Things that might help are: what the neighbours are doing; what was done in the past; and the placename.
In Ireland this is very useful as the placenames are nearly all descriptive of the topography and local information is also helpful. I recall a 'developer' buying Carey's Field for housing. It was always Carey's Bog to me as a child. Twenty years later I saw on the News that people had to be evacuated due to flooding.
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At the top of the plot the land has been built up for a barn and caravan pitch. This is much less wet than the rest so I suspect water is draining off of this. No sign of any springs although I may have found an old well. We're only a few feet above sealevel so the water table won't be far beneath the surface either, I suppose.
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we have a line of three springs at the back of the house, one is bricked out as a proper well. The old wells are usually surrounded by a couple of large stones to stop them silting up and a cover stone, nothing much just a frame for the well.
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That sounds very much like what I uncovered - a stone lined chamber with a slab of slate covering it. I might try pumping it out in the summer to get a proper look at it.
The house was built around 300 yrs ago, I think, so must have had it own well for a long time.
Persistent rain today. I'm going to have to do some digging tomorrow, I think.
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In Shetland they used those old wells till the fifties. If you can get an old map of your local area from your local history group or archives the wells should be marked on there. It is rare to find them complete with capstone , how interesting.
:( Gale force winds here :(
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AMBRIEL are you sure it is a well and not an old burial chamber
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Hey, that's a point - maybe we need to get Time Team involved? ;D
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thats an idea. get them to put a trench down your field.
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We've been using the prunings from our Leylandii in the field gateways and it's far better than straw or chippings. There had to be a use for the stuff
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Wow, brilliant, could I use that in my chicken run? Is it poisonous to them if they peck at it? I have a run of leylands either side of my property.
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We've been using the prunings from our Leylandii in the field gateways and it's far better than straw or chippings. There had to be a use for the stuff
What a fabulous idea. Although not sure how poisonous it may be like doganjo said, and also for goats. I did read somewhere I think that it can be toxic to pregnant ewes and their unborn lambs.
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I think this is one of the many areas no-one has researched cos no-one wants to pay for it. I'm sure its poisonous but not in the same league as yew. Our predecessors went to the tree shop and bought the catalogue, practically all of which have now been eaten by the horses. But they also bought a hundred leylandii which grow much faster. Even when we had a starvation paddock next to a hedge of leylandii it was barely touched. My horse is partial to a mouthful, but this is a guy who can graze and canter at the same time, not completely successfully.
When we put some branches in a gateway of liquid mud in January the horses looked interested perhaps because there was no grass but ate very little. We just put some more in another gateway and no interest at all - actually more interest in the secondhand straw from the sheep nursery.
My conclusion is that the animals will nibble but don't like it and won't eat it unless there's nothing else. We're getting some grass growth and the sheep are less interested in the haylage let alone the leylandii.
We put woodships in the hen house because we had a tree down last year and got a metre cube bag of it
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we can now see were the old drain system went because its that wet. the entire drain system needs redoing. someone filled in the top 50 metres of it and diverted it its going to have to be put back. hint don't mess with old drainage systems. layers of branches used to carry railways across bogs. so maybe with a membrane down and gravel on top you would have a floating gateway.
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Leylandi is an evergreen, and all evergreens are generally bad for livestock. However, the previous posts are correct- whilst Leylandi isn't very good, it's not really, really poisionous, like yew of rhodenren (sp?). I have seen goats eat some leylandi and they are fine with it- however I wouldn't like to see them eat any more than a few mouthfuls.
Not sure about chickens, but I can't see them being that interested in it in any case.
Beth
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on the subject of leylandii for putting in runs
my only concern is the chippings and compost they eventually make is very acidic and not great for the soil don't know what impact it would have in a chicken run as they get trashed anyway...
if we mulch leylandii at work we leave it in heaps for 2 years somewhere that doesn't matter before spreading on the land
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thats what we did it turned into a very peat like compost.