However, over the past week we have had a lot more rain, including 1.21 inches on Wednesday alone. To get straight to the point, the driveway has been holding up much better than before. All the work that we've been doing is helping. The burlap and seed blankets have been holding the dirt and seedlings in place through-out the downpours. There's still been a heck of a lot of water running over sections of the ground (in little rivers), but now it's not moving so fast and taking everything with it. There's still some problem areas need attention, but the "tornado" effect has subsided.
The current problem areas are: at the top corner where the water goes over the edge (as shown by the arrows):
And at the bottom where all the water runs off the driveway after running down the hill. Here you can see the daylilys we planted as an effort to help with the erosion (minus the flowers that recently disappeared):
We just need to figure out the best way to handle these areas. Any ideas?
The other problem that we're going to have to deal with at some point is the growing number of weeds that are sprouting:
Although for the time being, weeds are better than nothing.
2 comments:
Maybe some more heavy duty plants might help? There are probably certain rooty plants well suited to keeping the soil together. Farming or geography books would probably list them.
Another option would be to make some small channels filled with gravel to direct the water to where you want it. Some grass or reeds planted along the side would help disguise the channels.
We've been thinking about those options. Plants can help a a lot with drainage. You just have to choose plants that are happy in wet conditions, and that's what we were attempting with the daylilys.
Stone channels don't really fit in to our landscaping plan and would make cutting the grass more difficult, but we might have to go with that option if we can't get anything else to work.
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