T wrote:
....
I try to make my holes and beds slightly lower than
the surrounding surface so that water will drain into
them. And it did. The big bed I am making for
my onions took three days to drain after our whole
1/2 inch of rain stopped. (Pretty hard ground for
it not to soak in. It only went about two inches down
when I got to shoveling again.)

you don't want standing water on plants
for that long, so i hope that is not your
final contouring for that bed?

if you can put contours a few feet to
the sides to hold and soak that water
that would be much better.


And the peat moss is to hole water.

yeah.


With the drought, we have been seeing around 3 inches
per year for about the last five years or so.

we used to get more gentle and soaking rains
in the spring, but now things have become more
heavy downpours through most of the season. i try
to do all contours to hold 1-2 inches of rain
from a downpour and the rest can run into the
next layer. some of it may make it off the lot
but not much.

my other issue is potential flash flooding so
i do have drains and pathways set up to handle
that and the berm which has yet to be tested since
i put it in a few years ago.


songbird