This is the third and final post concerning the biggest problems we face with our gardens at Mædunbroc. If you haven’t had a chance, yet, please consider reading the first two posts on deer and invasive plants.
We live between two villages. The first summer we lived here, both of the villages experienced one of those rare 100-year floods that perhaps is not going to be so rare going forward with the worries of climate change. There had been a similar flood about twenty years ago that had been quite a doozy to hear the locals tell the tale, and another one so soon after has definitely been cause for alarm. Bridges were wiped out, sheds were lifted from their foundations, and businesses received water damage.
We escaped the brunt of the damage because we have soil to soak up the rain whereas the villages have asphalt, concrete, and houses next to houses next to houses. We’ve noticed we have a bit of a microclimate difference here, too. Neither village is far from us, but we can’t look at either as an indicator as to the weather we will experience at our house. Both receive snow when we get rain. Both get fog when we get sunshine. The temperature reported by the weather service is rarely the same as the one shown on our own thermometer. It’s interesting to see the differences even though we are located so close by.
We do have a lot of water, though, not just during a flooding event. We’ve found a number of natural springs on our property, which can be a very good thing, but we’ve also found water in places where we would prefer it not be.
We get a lot of snow in winter which is pretty when it’s falling and settling, but it brings with it the spring thaw. Not only does this give us Mud Season, but it creates runoff that needs to go somewhere. The previous owners built a sort of berm near the bottom of the hill to direct the runoff into a basin that drains across an access road and eventually into the field. It works a bit but not quite as it should. The basin never really fills with water. Perhaps it worked better when it was new. Now, the basin is mostly filled with garbage and overgrown invasive plants making it difficult to collect water causing most of it to rush out of the basin onto the access road carving a rut making the road almost impassable. We plan to fix it, of course. It’s on the list.
There is also just an overall feeling of damp. Mushrooms grow everywhere — in the forest, in the field, in the yard. Most of the north side of the yard is covered in very healthy moss. Lichen and algae grow on all the buildings and stones. None of this is especially bad. Some of it is actually quite good. The lichen, for example, let us know we have clean air to breathe, and the moss collects a lot of the rain that falls and snow that melts.
Balance is the key to all things healthy, of course, and we do tend to have a bit too much water. Our house is made out of wood as are the granary and carriage house. Too much water that never really gets the chance to dry leads to rot, and we’ve found more than our fair share of rotted wood in the last two years.
Not only do we have too much water at times, we have plants growing in heights and breadths that prevent sunlight and air movement causing water to stick around longer than it should. The most obvious example of this is the rhododendron hedge in the front of the house. The shrubs are tall enough to block sunlight from reaching the porches of the house, and they are growing so close to the house that they prevent air movement. It’s quite claustrophobic in that area, and the front of the house stays wet for much of the year. This is obviously not a good thing for a wooden house.
Too much water also leads to wet feet for plants that might prefer drier conditions. Knowing this will inform many of our plant choices as we build our gardens. We will also be considering drainage solutions and water storage options. We plan to collect the water when we have too much of it, so we can use it when we have too little.
Just like every other problem we intend to solve on this farm, we know we will have to do several things over time — not just one quick fix — to really solve our water problem.
We want to work with the water we have not against it, so we are going to have to make careful consideration of each garden we build, each plant we choose, and everything we do.
Next up, the most exciting part — our garden plans. We have a few, so subscribe to our blog so you won’t miss a single one.
