Our land has a high clay content, it doesn't drain well, consequently a plant called soft rush is thriving and crowding out the grass.
The answer is to improve drainage, add lime and spray with a weedkiller.
We're trying to avoid the weedkiller stage as there would be a high risk of losing our diversity of grasses and plants.
So we hired a mini-digger, bought 400m of perforated 80mm flexible pipe and 20 tonnes of stones.
The idea was to dig a trench about half a meter deep, put the pipe in, cover with stones and then back-fill.
To try to minimise the hire cost, we camped on the field to enable us to put in some 12 hour days.
The first few days, I was on my own as Janet had picked up some extra hours work. Then she joined in and even brought over her sisters family to help for one day.
The weather stayed fine, excepting one day, and it all seemed to be going to plan, if a little slowly, then we started to get problems.
The main one being the difficulty in getting the stones to the ditches.
We had two access routes and both became impassable to the two wheel drive tractor which was towing a car trailer.
One of the trenches effectively cut the field in half and as the heavens opened, we discussed abandoning the job until we could get better equipment.
The only thing we could do was laboriously transport the stones in the bucket of the mini-digger to a point in the field which tractor could get to without getting stuck. Then filling in a section so that the tractor and trailer could reach the other half of the field.
After 8 days, we had it done and a little spare time to dig out a pond.
On the last night it rained and the next morning, the drains were already working and the pond full!
The answer is to improve drainage, add lime and spray with a weedkiller.
We're trying to avoid the weedkiller stage as there would be a high risk of losing our diversity of grasses and plants.
So we hired a mini-digger, bought 400m of perforated 80mm flexible pipe and 20 tonnes of stones.
The idea was to dig a trench about half a meter deep, put the pipe in, cover with stones and then back-fill.
To try to minimise the hire cost, we camped on the field to enable us to put in some 12 hour days.
The first few days, I was on my own as Janet had picked up some extra hours work. Then she joined in and even brought over her sisters family to help for one day.
The weather stayed fine, excepting one day, and it all seemed to be going to plan, if a little slowly, then we started to get problems.
The main one being the difficulty in getting the stones to the ditches.
We had two access routes and both became impassable to the two wheel drive tractor which was towing a car trailer.
One of the trenches effectively cut the field in half and as the heavens opened, we discussed abandoning the job until we could get better equipment.
The only thing we could do was laboriously transport the stones in the bucket of the mini-digger to a point in the field which tractor could get to without getting stuck. Then filling in a section so that the tractor and trailer could reach the other half of the field.
After 8 days, we had it done and a little spare time to dig out a pond.
On the last night it rained and the next morning, the drains were already working and the pond full!
