Rain Draining Strategies

When rainstorms come pouring through California each winter, think about this: Where is all that water going when it lands in your backyard? Here are some tips to protect your house, pool cover and prized outdoor plants located in low lying areas:

• Enjoy the rain...from indoors. Do as little as possible in the garden during a downpour. Working in wet soil causes compaction. 

 

• Add gutter extensions to move water away from the house. These sections of flexible pipe allow you to divert water several feet away from plants that don't like wet feet. And, it may keep your house foundation drier, too.

A better system for draining water away from house gutters or garden beds that habitually have slow water percolation: a hard pipe drain system. Surface drains lead to three-inch PVC pipe, buried beneath the soil and sloping down towards the lowest part of the property or to an outlet.
 Be sure to slope the drain pipe, allowing at least a one foot drop for each 100 feet of length (one quarter-inch per foot). Dig backwards from where the water will exit the pipe, trenching back towards the source of flooding to help determine how deep to lay the drain pipe. Line the trench with a few inches of gravel, both above and below the pipe. For a lawn area, try to lay the pipe at least two feet below the surface.

 

• Get a submersible sump pump to move water in a hurry from pool covers and planted areas that flood. Some models are water activated (they automatically come on when the water level rises an inch or so). Place the sump pump on a board to keep dirt from clogging the filtration screen.

• Dig a hole. A hole (also called a sump) that is dug in the lowest portion of your yard, a hole that penetrates through all the layers of hardpan (usually 2-4 feet below the surface), can help drain away storm water. Line the hole with a non-porous material (hard plastic sheeting, for example) to keep the surrounding dirt from falling back into the hole. Fill the hole with small rocks, about one inch in diameter.

• Construct an underground hard drain or a French drain (perforated drain pipe or gravel creek bed). If it's the lawn area that's flooding, dig a trench and lay a drain line in the lowest area of the lawn. Don't do any digging immediately after a heavy rain, though; wait until the soil dries enough to avoid unnecessary soil compaction. Be sure to slope the perforated drain pipe, allowing at least a one foot drop for each 100 feet of length (one quarter-inch per foot). Dig backwards from where the water will exit the pipe, trenching back towards the source of flooding to help determine how deep to lay the drain pipe. Line the trench with a few inches of gravel, both above and below the pipe. For a lawn area, try to lay the pipe at least two feet below the surface.

• If it's the garden bed that's flooding, consider building raised beds this fall, lining the bed with 2X8, 2X10 or 2X12 redwood planks. Capping off the top of these boards with 2X6 redwood will give you a comfortable place to sit while harvesting vegetables and pulling weeds.

 

• If you haven't planted in a flooded area yet, consider creating mounds first, planting trees and shrubs on the top of the mounds.

 If you're still stuck with pools of standing water after heavy rains despite your best efforts, consider planting trees and shrubs that can take "wet feet". Water-tolerant trees for many areas of Northern and Central California include sweet gum, magnolia, and tupelo. Shrubs for wet areas include thuja and red twig dogwood.

The Good Bug Hotel

This started as an accident. "Temporarily" using one of the six valuable raised beds as a holding area for various ornamental plants until we could come up with a permanent garden home for them.

 

Well, before you know it, the ornamentals started taking over, leaving little room at the other end of the bed for the vegetables. 

It's not just vegetables that like raised beds. All that high quality, easy draining soil, sunlight and regular watering is nirvana for just about any plant, including the perennials, small shrubs and self-sowing annuals that are filling that 4'x20' box.

 And we didn't have the heart to move them...at least not while they were thriving and looking good. The problem was...they always looked good!

But something happened on the way to the garden shed to get the spading fork to move those offenders of vegetable space.

A closer look showed that these plants had become good bug hotels: attractive flowers for pollinating insects (all sorts of different bees), bigger pollinators (birds, hummingbirds) and beneficial insects (lacewings, ladybugs, syrphid flies and more).

And since most garden fruits and vegetables rely on insects for pollination and bad bug control, who was I to kick these laborers out of their residence? After all, the only payment they asked for was a little food and shelter, along with some nearby water.

There is still a bit of room in that bed for winter vegetables (letting the broccoli and cilantro go to flower in spring is attracting all manner of bees, as well). 




 
But the showy flowers in that bed - including the scabiosa, nicotiana, salvia, sweet peas, cilantro, sunflowers and butterfly bush - will always be a place for the good guys to live, year round.

Golden Years Gardening

     As we age, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weaker...when it comes to gardening. 

     Our enjoyment of growing fruit, flowers and vegetables seems to increase as the years fly by. Maybe it's because we've come to better appreciate how nature works; maybe it's because we enjoy doing things closer to home; or, maybe it's because plants don't talk back. 

     Whatever the reason, one thing is for certain: we don't bend down into a flower bed, lift bags of fertilizer and pull weeds as easily as we used to. As a result, we know that a few hours working briskly in the yard may result in an evening of moving slower.
   
    Here are some tips for implementing an easy-care garden for the Golden Years, advice that can be summed up in three words: automate, elevate and eliminate.

• Automate. Provide your garden with an automatic watering system. The efficiency of an automated sprinkler or drip irrigation system protects your plants from the summertime heat when you're away from home. And, a good drip system reduces water usage, unwanted weed growth and plant diseases. Install low-voltage night lighting, equipped with sensors, to automatically come on at sunset throughout the yard.

• Elevate. Build raised planters for your flowering plants and vegetables. Not only do raised beds reduce the amount of stooping and kneeling that are a necessary part of gardening, raised beds provide better drainage for plants that don't like "wet feet". Built of wood, concrete or brick, a raised bed, 18-24 inches high, gives you a place to sit while weeding, pruning or harvesting. Make the raised beds any length you desire; but keep the width less than four feet across for ease of reaching into the middle of the bed. And lining the bottom of these beds with quarter-inch mesh hardware cloth will keep gophers from sampling the fruits of your labor.

• Eliminate. Why waste time fretting over a habitually under performing perennial, shrub or tree? If it is growing awkwardly or is consistently pest infested despite your best efforts, bring out the chipper/shredder. Dig it out, chop it up and get another plant that will do better. Better yet, have someone else do the digging and chopping. 

Although the attempt to totally eradicate weeds is an exercise in futility, adding three or four inches of mulch, such as a walk-on bark, can dramatically reduce the amount of time you spend pulling weeds.