Garden Swale: How It's Doing

About a year and a half ago, we dug a garden swale. The purpose of a swale is to collect and store rain runoff. It’s dug wide and deep for that purpose. The stored water slowly seeps into the ground and hydrates underground. This is important because during a drought, even a good rain may not saturate the ground deeply. So, a three inch rain may only get the top three or four inches of soil wet. I learned this by digging around in the soil with a shovel after a rain.

A couple of weeks ago, I planted black turtle beans in the bare spots, because I don’t like to leave bare soil anywhere.

What amazes me is how well everything has done considering that the berm is mostly clay subsoil. Being raised, it does tend to dry out fairly quickly during our hot dry spells in summer. What has survived and thrived, has done it without help from me: no watering, no compost, no mulch, just a little chop and drop. Amazing, isn’t it? I’m thrilled that it’s thriving.