jason holdstock

Thank you for the replies.

If I leave the paths as just bark chip mulch then for any given rainfall the area closest to the inlet will always benefit first, maybe sucking up all the water delivered from the nearby roof.

A third of an acre would perhaps have twelve raised beds 50m long, (maybe subdivided).

I think I would need french drains laid to zero fall to try to get the water from the one or two delivery points to make its way as evenly and equally around the whole system as possible. I want it to stay under the beds, not get stuck at the beginning or pool at the outlet.

A filter at the outlet was in place in the examples I saw here a while back, but that got blocked with the chip, needed clearing, and then all that material needed putting back where it washed away from.

You could think of what I'm trying to do as put swales between the raised beds, I'm just putting a lid on them, topped with wood chip to keep the path usable when soaked and not too far below the working surface of the raised bed.

Shallow paths of woody debris have no means of storing a lot of excess water, and if there is excess the debris floats off and blocks outlets etc as other folks here have documented. If there is a small amount of surface water on the path then it becomes less useful as a path. I could build the paths to a fall but then even less will soak in where I want it.

I may be being daft but I like the idea of storing rainwater where it's needed and then used passively, with minimal evaporation, but I'd have to build the french drains before forming the raised beds.

Paving slab cost would be huge unless I find some super cheap or free so that's a no no.

Maybe I could bury scaffold boards over a small ditch under the bark mulch though? How long does treated timber last if you bury it I wonder?

I used to live next to a field in SE UK which had wood filled drainage from many many years ago which gave a lovely undulation to the grazing. Maybe a 6' wide 1' dip every 18' running one side to the other.

I would rather not use plastic but I don't think putting branches in a relatively shallow trench and then stone or wood chip on top would give a good and safe path? It the trench was much deeper, much more depth of compacted branches with much more fill on top then maybe, but I'm not trying to drain, I'm trying to store where it's directly within reach, and undercover from the sun. A shallow fill would work away from a path, but I don't think directly under it would.

Unless I covered it with something solid like paving slabs but the cost of that would be silly. Although then they could be just covering a ditch with no plastic, no stone, no branches so maybe overall cost might not be silly, I'll have to look into that :)

Further away than the outbuilding is another building and a pond fed from next doors roof, so piping all that lot into the system might be on the cards too. The pond has no overflow, doesn't overflow but is 100% full at one point in the year normally I'm told, but almost dry about now so some work needed there as well. There's quite a bit of excess water soaking away somewhere I could make use of.

Mine spun items are from Netherton Foundry in the UK and are well made.

The frying pan has wooden handles that I unscrewed early on and have not put back. Not needed so far.

It does heat up more quickly but my heavier normal thick old pan might take twice as long, can take more energy more easily to do so (getting heat up the sides of both takes patience) but that's fine.

Bacon and eggs in the spun works well. Steak is always done on the heavier one, which also gets chillis, curries, stews maybe, partly just because it's my bigger pan, partly for the better heat retention.

I think that if you are used to and like heavy cast iron you may not like spun apart from the lightness, they don't work the same but I think still better than non-stick etc. That's why I started off with one small pan to see how I got on.

My spun pan at 8" is 850g 30oz with no lid or wooden handle sections. Netherton said their 8" lid is half that again, the 10" is 1.2kg 42oz alone and 2.02kg 71oz with lid. The 2lb loaf tin works as well as any I've had before, though a bit wider, and is 1200g 42 oz. All weights approx.

I also got a small saucepan with lid from them but found using and cleaning it a pain. I need to make more effort to learn how to!

Cleaning the fry pan is with hot water and a piece of chainmail, reseasoning is usually butter, sometimes stove top sometimes in the oven.

I maybe should have bought an 8" lid too.

Thank you for the replies :)

I have some lazy beds here with ditches that I cleared out and the ground is now much firmer. I now sink 2" not 2' ;)

I was thinking that my proposed raised beds would actually not be very raised if I filled with bark almost up to the growing bed level. So although the water level may be a long way down compared to root depth, the moisture in the growing bed would be maintained to a greater height? And the path stays firm underfoot, not a stream.

It is possible I could put a water catchment tank inside the outbuilding even, and I do have some drip line already. I was thinking my french drain idea would be working all the time with no input. Then I could use drip line on newly planted growth or as required, rather than a full time daily maintained system.

Currently rainwater is just lost into the ground around this particular outbuilding, and the 1/3rd of an acre next to it I could use for veggies on raised beds gets a bit dry.

So I thought I could use the pathways between the beds as a covered water store, with the french drain pipework to help the rainwater get from the end with the building to flow more evenly around the whole area, rather than just the building end getting most of it.

If I dig the paths out to the same level first then I think the water should spread fairly evenly around the pipe network.

The lowest corner can have a sump with an overflow.

What it might end up doing though is to lower the water table within the raised beds.

I could instead source a big catchment tank placed at the building and run that into drip feeder hose, but that's a big ugly lump of plastic most likely.

I'm shortly moving to a new to me house in a new to me area (France) where there is about 1/3rd of a (flat) acre  I can put raised beds on, next to a reasonably sized outbuilding that currently has no gutters.

If I borrowed a digger and dug an 18" path, 12" deep, between 48" wide beds (approx), put that soil on the beds, lined the path trench with geotextile of some sort to keep weeds and fines out, laid something like a 3" perforated pipe along them all connected at the ends, backfilled about 8" with uniform sized stone to allow through flow, folded the geotextile over the top, covered that with barkchips then guttered the nearby roof diverting the rainwater into the french drains, would that be a total waste of time and money?

Covert in situ rainwater storage :)

But, would the veg in the raised beds benefit from water in the bottom of the path drain?

Would just a slightly dug out path topped with mulch do pretty much the same thing?

Would I destroy the geotextile if the beds needed tilling?

It does get a bit dry in the summer at the moment.

Thank you

Someone ages ago put me onto spun cast iron which is not cheap but much lighter. I have a small fry pan which gets used every day, and a loaf tin used every five days ish.
I have a lovely old 12" fry pan too but it is quite heavy.
The only Lodge I have is a three section fry pan thing so the juices should stay separate between sections. But the raised dividers are so low they are mostly useless. It was only about £25 shipped to the UK so that may be why!

Jay Angler wrote: my hand isn't physically large enough to operate the clutch.

My hand too, but I don't think you're supposed to be able to grab it like a bike clutch/brake. More like curl fingers under the lever, pull it closed to the handle, wrap hand round lever and handle, off you go. I'm not sure why it is like it is, maybe to stop you feathering it? Or rubbish design? My 4 wheel tractor I was told had a cone clutch whatever that is, and it should be on or off. Holding it between hugely shortens it's lifespan apparently. Two wheelers too?