Drainage time of the year again.
Out to catch a few more springs. This 30ac is relatively new to us and we’ve put a lot of money into drains here over the past couple of years.
What we have done so far has transformed the place but we had left some areas until this year.
It’s interesting; the land has a deep clay subsoil and is 1.5 km from the coast. Silty topsoil with virtually no stones present.
It had been in grass with a portion tilled on occasion. The first year, the winter barley was very poor there. Last year it grew 4tn of spring barley and this year it produced 2.1tn of WOSR.
P, K and lime have been corrected.
There’s a hill behind it which leads to springs in our land. It doesn’t appear that a huge effort was ever made to trap the springs.
The drains are being dug 6-8ft deep and we have found veins of gravel running through the clay subsoil. The water from the high ground seems to run through the gravel and then when it meets an end of the gravel it comes to the surface.
We walked the land in the depth of winter and marked the wet spots with painted concrete blocks. Once the crop was cut, we found the blocks and put down marking poles for the digger.
There’s a smell of the sea from the gravel veins when they are opened to the air, this is a hint of their origin.