A bit of a drainage problem
Stephanie newish gardener
Posts: 464
Those of you who replied to my question some months ago about drainage and heavy soil might have some tips on how to harvest my garlic now that the pot is not quite as waterlogged as the rest of the garden...
I can't physically get to my beloved greenhouse and shed to check on them, and I'm trying not to be distraught about the summer house 
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Posts
Ah yeesss!
Might have to wait a few days & hope the rain does stop now. Lift it as soon as you can get to it & put on a shelf in the greenhouse to dry off!
oh dear, you'll be happy to know that most plants are fairly fine with a short period of submergence (even garlic) so as long as it dry's out within a week you shouldn't loose any plants....buildings on the other hand. :-(
Stephanie ... that looks awful and most distressing ... but most plants recover from short term summer floods quite well .......... we'll keep our fingers crossed for you and your garden ((hugs))
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Just back in after the initial clear up, and thankfully the water has now found a way back out of the garden, and the basement, and the garage, summer house, greenhouse and shed, leaving a trail of what will become wattle and daub if we don't free the debris off the plants.
The question re garlic was a bit tongue in cheek because the garlic was potentially one of the few plants to survive, floating as it was on its own raft - that's it in the first pic I posted. Well if u don't laugh...
Thanks for the good wishes, I may be back with rescue questions!
Oh, and only in Scotland would a raging torrent be called a burn!
So you don't need to borrow the fishing net I was going to suggest?
At least it didn't float off downstream.....
See the edit function hasn't improved much.
Last edited: 07 June 2017 14:58:01
This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
We had to learn "Inversnaid" (Gerard Manley Hopkins) for O level. Your post just brought it right back.
I'm glad you can now see the grass again and I hope your clear up goes well. I have a "sweeping up" blister after yesterday's rain but I don't fancy facing your job.
Good Luck.
Must admit your tongue in cheek garlic question made me laugh.
A good pair of wellies and you'll be grand!
Oh Stephanie, poor you
. Your thread title was a bit of an understatement.
It's good that you can laugh about it....I think
. I'd be beside myself.
Good luck with the clear up, and I hope there's not too much damage to your lovely garden
Well we're finally back indoors and have just been salvaging some photos and letters before having a large glass of something better than river water.
We lost one of those tall plastic garden stores, it floated off over the garden wall and is probably now heading for Denmark. Ironically one of the things in it was an irrigation kit!
My greenhouse is amazingly intact, though stinks of parrafin as the heater floated around a bit. We lost a few small things in there, mostly my late planted beans that hadn't yet germinated, but the tomatoes are all ok.
The new Acer my husband bought a week or so ago - see my other thread about neglecting an Acer for the story of that one - is nowhere to be seen, probably in someone else's garden downstream if it's lucky. And my poor broccoli and kale seedlings were just never !want to be - again see other thread. The latest batch had just been potted up and put under a tree out of the heavy rain....no idea where they are now
My lovely new shed built from a preloved children's playhouse by my fab and capable husband now needs hosing out as it's full of silt, but I am glad that I remembered to put the tin of seeds back up on the shelf for once instead of leaving it on the floor.
The potato box lifted and moved a bit but is otherwise remarkably ok, but the other box is now about 40m further up the garden. Somehow the courgette seems to have survived, but a number of recently planted shrubs look very much worse for wear.
I know we have been very fortunate as it could have been so much worse, but I'm so upset at all the hard work we have put in, building the summerhouse, gradually winning back the overgrown garden, putting in new plants and generally making it all look lovely. It will recover I know. We had a similar amount of water through the garden in early Nov 2009 and it gradually returned to normal, so maybe the silt will make all the new flowers look blooming lovely!
I'm impressed with anything that can survive being under 3 feet of water, even if only for about 4 hours, and maybe it's just as well I was behind with a lot of my sowing otherwise I would have lost a lot more