Dealing with waterlogged areas
Digweed51
Posts: 28
At the moment I have rather a large amount of waterlogged areas in my garden, including the lawn.
I live in Yorkshire and we’ve had some pretty horrendously wet weather recently. Nothing out of the ordinary for us at this time of year. The areas do generally dry out as the better weather comes but winter gardening and maintenance is practically impossible due to the soil being unworkable.
What can I do to possibly waterlog prevent my garden areas and enable me to start digging again in preparation for spring time?
0
Posts
I'm in Yorkshire too, and I can sympathise with the sog! Best to keep off the waterlogged areas until they dry out a bit - otherwise you will further compact the soil and make things worse. For a waterlogged lawn you need to improve the surface drainage, by "hollow tining" or spiking; you can hire a machine if you have a large area of lawn, and brush sharp sand in to the holes created.
Adding humus to beds and borders, in any form really - compost, manure, spent hops, spent mushroom compost etc - makes the soil behave more like a sponge, and both hold more water in dry conditions, and drain better when it's very wet.
Putting in land drains is a major undertaking but might be worth doing if your garden is new and empty, and very waterlogged...