The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Techniques and skills => Topic started by: faith0504 on September 03, 2010, 08:46:18 am
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hi can you put a drainage system in to a field if it has no ditches to drain to, its a 2 acre field on a slight incline, the top paddock is wetter than the others, the lower paddock is the driest!!!!!!!!!! for some strange reason.
please can anyone help
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I would be interested to hear what the replies are. We also have 2 acres but the wet part runs in a line downhill through both fields. This is where we have loads of rushes which the sheep hate and the goats love.
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Hi,
The main thing to consider when draining a field is where is the water you drained going to go to?
There is no point in just moving the problem to another field.
You really need a drainage ditch or a large soakaway or pond.
Thanks
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if you have none of those, is there anything you can do, drainage wise?
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plant lots of willow they absorb gallons and gallons as they grow.
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mmh thats worth thinking about, if i could stop me mare eating it, plant white willow that would come in for horsey treat also, thanks for that
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Surely it would not be hard to stop a horse eating tress with a decent fence, perhaps even electrified.
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you need to meet my mare she is a monkey ha ha
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I hate to be the harbringer of doom :-[ but if your field's very wet the amount of willow you'd need to plant to dry it up would do away with valuable space.
What type of soil do you have ? If it's a heavy clay and it's holding water you could try ploughing it and adding LOTS of 'organic matter' to allow it to drain more freely. But if it's already good soil and just wet, the ONLY way to get it dry is as SFS says - lay in drains. Look to where your closest (downhill) run off point is - whether it's a pond, river, reed bed, soakaway or road ditch there's bound to be SOMETHING you can use (it might just be further away) then dig the trenches and lay in the pipes.
What borders your top field ? Could it be that someone else is draining their fields onto your land ? Or a large area of dense forrest ? That can sometimes make the surrounding ground wet. It could even be that there's a burst pipe somewhere below ground in the field ? The fact that it's the highest field that's the wettest would suggest to me that something's amiss - it might be worth having a check at old plans for pipes etc and asking neighbours if they have problems. There might be an easier fix than having to lay in the drains (but I'd prepare yourself for that job if you really want the land dry and useable ;))
Good luck, Karen x
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You will find that much land has ancient stone drains that were dug by hand and pre-date the land maps. Very often a wet spot is caused by one of these collapsing. If you can find where your wet spot starts, try digging down to locate the drain (usually quite shallow) and it may be possible to remove the collapsed section and replace it with perforated drainage pipe to connect back into the stone drain either side of the collapse. Alternatively, it could just be you have a spring, in which case you might be grateful of a pond in a dry time?
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thanks for the advice looks like i have got some digging to do in more ways than one ???
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I agree entirely with old ploughman- he has the problem spot on- collapsed shore or spring- most probably the latter if you don't have any ditches for old shores to drain to.