Hello everyone, i have a ditch running along my northern property line that is about 150 Feet in lenth. Its full sun. It is the lowest elevation on my
land.
Water comes in at the NE corner and flows out at the NW corner.
This ditch runs in front of a few houses so it consists of road runoff, toxic
lawn gick runoff, and general poisen spray. My neighbors, including right nextdoor to me are lawn people. Spray it, scalp it, water it, repeat. Its really troubling for me to see someone scalp a bermuda lawn when its 100F outside so its basically brown and dying, then water it all day in the heat of the sun with a sprinkler. Ughhh.. Anyway i digress.
Some folks up the ditch have paved the bottom with
concrete, some folks put in a buried pipe and grew grass over the ditch. I have noticed up on the concrete that the water has left crusty white and pink stains, very toxic seeming.
So the area is essencially toxic, and has powerlines running overhead so it also has an electromagnetic field on it. My ditch is about 5 feet wide and 1-2 feet deep. And is covered with some type of grass. I had the idea to do ornamental bananas and taro, that would totally shade the ditch. I went to the asian market and picked up taro bulbs and stuck them in the muddy rocky center of the ditch. Success! Two plants sprouted and have grown up through the hottest part of our season. When water flows it pushes them over, but the grass kind of supported them too.
So my plan is evolving and i plan to dig some of the sediment out of the ditch since it appears to be about 1/4 of the way filled in from what it once was.
How would i go about forming settling lagoons, small dams, and other things to make the area better. As it is, water is in there even a day or two after rain, so if i had a small dam then more water would remain after the rains. Problem is this ditch handles a lot of water and will flood into the street if i cause it to overflow. For some reason my mind is thinking wooden dams that Could be installed in such a way that the shallow flow hits the
wood but its short
enough that when the ditch fills up water can flow over the top. Anyone have
experience with anything like this?
My dream for the area would be a vernal pool or frog
pond type thing covered in lovely taro leaves with bananas poking out.