Yes, there's a little water in the very bottom of the pond. And the drainage ditch that crosses the driveway is running. So, time to go see where the drainage runs, relative to the regrettably-floody good soil downhill.
Turns out that there's a vestigial drainage ditch in the Annex, leading to a little culvert that crosses the property line and connects to the ditch across the neighbors' lawn. It doesn't extend very far... and it looks like there could be a terrain issue with trying to drain the real bottom land. This may be a project for sometime when I can rent a baby excavator, or even hire somebody who does drainage projects.
But! There's a large area, several feet above the lowlands, that feels decently level (as in, I'd have no problem driving the tractor, with tiller, across that area). The USDA soil map (hey, the imagery is recent! Like, within the last year; actually, I think it's from last April) shows it as being "Waynesboro loam, 6 to 15 percent slopes, eroded", with maybe 5 inches of loam above the clay loam. So... guess someday soon I should go poke a shovel in it, and see how far down the topsoil actually does go. USDA thinks its usability is erosion-limited, but it feels fairly level to me, so I think I won't need to worry too much about the soil washing away downslope, at least for a moderate-sized garden patch.
So. A little soil probing, some measurements, and I gotta come up with a plan, and make sure I'm sufficiently supplied with fencing materials and weed-barrier fabric. Actual tilling probably happens sometime in March or early April, depending how the weather goes.
Let's see... I have 300 feet of good-quality fence mesh, bought last spring. A quick sketch in Google Earth suggests that I'll want around a 200 foot perimeter for an appallingly large garden patch. (For reference, my entire lot back in Sunnyvale had a 300-foot perimeter.) I have quite a pile of pressure-treated wood posts, and a pile of T-posts, plus a (manual) post-hole digger, a T-post driver, and a big bag of clips. Have to do something about a gate, but that shouldn't be a big deal, as long as I plan ahead. Gate has to be big enough to drive the tractor through, though I hope I won't need to use the tractor on the garden patch after the first year, if I make appropriate use of weed barrier and cover crops. Hope not being a plan, the gate must be wide enough....
Once things dry out, I'll have to start mowing the walkways again, including new ones through and around the Annex. The new, expanded perimeter path should add up to just about a mile!
Recent Comments