Soak away..

[First-time-buyer]

Afternoon,

I have a garden which has poor drainage, the plan was to dig a sample hole and see how far down I would need to go before the clay was no more. I assume its clay.

I dig this hole, its 1mtrs ishy deep, and a spade wide. It was dry when I made it, then last night I filled it with water to see how it drained. I boarded over it last night, no rain last night.

This morning, it was still full of water, unsure if the level had dropped but it was still there.

Any ideas?

At this rate, the soakaway needs to be the length of the garden, maybe even more...

Hole

Hole Contents

 

[valcra]

the dark soil with the roots in it is your valuable stuff- look after that and improve it with as much well rotted organic stuffs you can lay your hands on. (the root depth is telling you how deep the good stuff is. about 300mm or 1ft by the looks of it)

the yellow/orange stuff is the underlying clay-never cultivate into this layer and don't mix it with your layer of topsoil.

you could dig a french drain across your garden from highest to lowest point. basically this is a ditch filled with aggrigate wich drains excess water from surrounding garden to a point where it can drain away to adjoining land or gutter.