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15 Feb ’12
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Nice article and vid, I have been thinking of utilizing swales to take care of my low spots in the yard
3 Nov ’12
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will watch...goes great with the class I'm taking, just finished the water chapter and swales were a big factor
20 Feb ’12
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I just like the word swale, so you should build some just so you can say the word more often.
when you talk about low spots in the yard, and using swales to take care of them, what are you thinking specifically?
The great thing about swales is they tie nicely into the edge principal. We often think of water as the purposes of a swale, but many forms of media, not just water, collect at edges in the system. If you throw your swales in below your bird/pig area you are going to get a collection of beneficial nutrients from that run off, in addition to other bio media like leaves/grass/branches that you'd get anyway.
Water is just one of the beneficial media you'll accumulate in your swales, and if you design with that in mind you're going to love your swales more than you thought possible.
15 Feb ’12
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I will take some pics later today on what I was thinking
15 Feb ’12
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so this is looking to the right of the pond, the berm diverts water toward the gazebo and garden
you can see the mud pit to the left, this is one of the areas the water pools
and on the left by the gazebo and along the raised beds on the right
looking at the back side of the gazebo, a better shot of the ground draining everything toward the raised beds
our soil has a lot of clay, here are some ruts I had made in the back field with the 4 wheeler, been holding water all summer
same with the back side right behind the pig pen
the pigs say sup
I took these pics two days ago, we had some rain last night, you can see the areas of concern for standing water
my idea would be to make swales going across the yard divert away from the raised beds so we don't have a issue again like this year, then run it back into the pig area into a small holding pond for the pigs to wallow in, I can also swale the field into it, then take the drainage off the back side behind the pen and use that and divert the over flow to a ditch that runs along the left side of our property
thoughts?
20 Feb ’12
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Interesting possibilities.
Try to keep your swales on contour otherwise you'll not get the buildup of water in them, and you'll risk erosion. Although with clay, that may be less of an issue.
With so much clay I would be cautious about the water seeping down through the first bit of topsoil until it hit the clay and then ran downhill anyway. If you make an effort to work the clay into the downside wall of the swale it should hold water better for you.
Either way the ducks should be happy!
15 Feb ’12
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lol, yeah the ducks, that mud pit near the pond is their bathing spot when it's full, they have a 60 foot pound and choose to use a 2 foot puddle to frolic in
I'll see if I have some graph paper and do a contour of the yard
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