Hi there. I've been lurking for a while but finally have a question that I can't seem to find answered already.
I have raised beds in my suburban yard planted mostly with vegetables. I want to take the water from my downspouts/water barrel overflows and run them to a swale that goes around the raised beds. I'm not sure if it is a swale or a wicking bed or what exactly it would be called. But the plan is this water would then be able to provide for most (all? some? a bit?) of the water needs of the vegetables. I plan to fill the swale with wood chips/straw/leaves to give me a pathway to access the beds. The yard around the beds is pretty darn close to flat. I'm sure there is a slight slope I'll find as I start digging but to the naked eye it looks flat. The soil surface in the raised beds is around 8-10" above ground level. I was thinking of a swale around a foot deep and two feet wide (or so - path width) but after finding the info on wicking beds I am second guessing myself. For wicking beds, they talk about 300cm/12" as being the maximum water will come up a lot. For swales, it seems to generally be more of a function of how much water you need to retain and I haven't found much about how far up the water will come.
What do you guys figure would be a good depth for my swale so that it would still be of a benefit to a raised bed? I don't want the water so deep it can't percolate up into the raised beds at all.
Sean
