I'm blonde, not stupid Here's me pretending to have dug the trenches

It's bloody cold in January

Our season began bloody early this year, I'd just about recovered from celebrating the new year when we started! After last years problems with the weather, when we almost lost a hundred or so plants due to the fact that it pissed it down for so long that people started buying plans for wooden boats and searching for pairs of animals that they liked. This year we were taking no chances and decided that we'd slap in a spanking new drainage system for the top beds. When I say "we" I mean the royal we, Barry just sat on his arse in a nice warm room playing with google Did I mention it was cold? Seriously, I had to wear a jumper that was thicker than a redneck convention.

We started off with a trench that extended almost the full length of the large greenhouse, thankfully I wasn't the one who had to dig it. It ran from the existing drainage system, which is about a quarter of the way up, all the way to the very top of the greenhouse. Each of the other three top beds also had trenches dug along there full length, we're not taking any chances, and all four were connected by a cross trench. Did I mention that I'm glad that I wasn't the muppet that had to dig them? It looks like a lot of work, although the guy who dug them managed it in a long morning!

You wouldn't believe this was buried a few years ago

Now it's my turn

So, in I bimbled, shivering my poor nuts off, on a very cold January day, to find all our flower beds sitting on the paths and looking in a smidge of a sorry state. It's a tad weird looking at them from the under side. There was also a huge mound of stones and a coil of pipe lurking maliciously in the corner next to the wheel barrow and shovel ... so I went into the office to see Gary and grab a coffee, I'm not a cold weather person .... if it can't be done in shorts then it should be done by someone else huh? .... several coffees later, none with brandy in .. the stingy sod .... I gritted my teeth and stepped out into the cold .... after several days of acclimatising myself to the weather in this manner I started on the task of turning all the pipe, stones and soil into flower beds with a drainage system.

The first thing to do was to slap a thin layer of stones in all the trenches for the pipe to sit on, eventually it'll be wrapped in stones to stop soil clogging it up. It was interesting to see the exposed cross-section of the existing drainage system as you could see just how effective the stones were at keeping the soil away from the pipe, they looked as clean as the day that we ... that'd be the royal "we" again ... put the system in a couple of years ago. With that done I decided that enough was enough and meandered off to find a warm place and a crate of beer ... Eventually I ran out of beer so I had no excuse to not go and play with a hacksaw and some blue pipe.

Take one spade, a huge length of pipe and a bloody big pile of clay and soil

The pie eyed piper

Once the layer of stones was in .... and the beer finished .... it was time to start cutting the pipe to length and joining all the various sections together. The most important joint being the junction between the old and the new as it's pretty pointless draining all the beds and giving the resulting water no place to go ... kinda defeats the object. Although this was a simple task ... I'm blonde, I only do simple ... it's a smidge time consuming and playing with a hacksaw with frozen hands is not my idea of a fun day. Luckily the only arteries I cut we're all to do with drainage system. At this point I called it a day again, I used the excuse that it goes dark early, and once again went to hunt out a warm place and a crate of beer.

The next task involved a wheel barrow, a shovel, a few tons of stone and a lot of man power .... all provided by one man ..... As all of the pipework needed to be surrounded in a cosy coat of stones ... they're cosy to a pipe .... as I mentioned earlier, these act as a kind of filter and stop the soil from clogging the holes in the pipe, if you forget them then you might as well not bother digging the hole in the first place ... not that I dug the hole of course, but you get the point ... It gets pretty boring filling a barrow with stones and meandering it the length of the field, just to empty it into a hole, and then start again ... so once again I blamed the lack of sunshine and went to see if there was any beer left in the crate that was sat in a nice snug room at home.

It's a little weird seeing our irrigation system floating above our drainage system

Putting the beds back

At last the pile of stones was lower than a snakes neck tie and all of the pipes were covered with a good layer, so it was time to start putting the flower beds back where they were expected to be. This was a smidge easier than playing with the stones because at least the soil was beside the holes that it was expected to be in. However, when you're talking tons of soil, I shudder to think of just how many tons, there is no such thing as "an easy day". Once again it was just a matter of grunt work with a shovel and was more boring than watching England play cricket with ... well, just about anybody ... although the end result would be faster. Eventually all the soil was back where it was before we started and I was able to see the paths again for the first time in many a week, so I took my aching and frozen body off to accost a crate of beer.

Was it worth it?

So far the system seems to be performing as expected but until we take the roofs off the greenhouse, and have a bout of torrential rain, it's a bit hard to judge. I do know that the beds were in a far better state when we came to prepping them up ready for planting, but that's another story and another post We're pretty confident that we won't have any problems with them flooding like they did last year, of course this now means that we'll have problems keeping them watered enough for the plants to grow, but it's easier to turn a tap on than it is to turn the weather off huh? ... anyway, I've just spotted a lonely looking crate of beer so I think I'll just go keep it company.

Have fun
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