Making a Swale/Berm

I was looking forward to working in the garden when I woke up this morning but it started raining again. Then our new friends who just got married a few days ago called us up and asked if we could meet them in town because they wanted to give us something and treat us for lunch. So we went out of the house and spent the morning with their company and that was very enjoyable.

It was still raining when we got back home so I ended up reading the Sunday newspaper of which I haven't had time to read since we bought the papers yesterday.

Around 3 in the afternoon, the rain stopped and I went out to the backyard garden. Instead of working on enclosing the other side of the raised bed in the middle of the garden, I worked on making a swale or berm for the rain water runoff. According to the news, we are going to get hit with another storm and the direction seems to be focused towards Northern and Central Luzon. The storm is expected to make a landfall here by tomorrow afternoon. So I decided to prioritize making the swale/berm for the water runoff before I get a flooded backyard garden. I just followed the natural slope of the land where the water usually goes down. I dug up this trench some more to make this deeper so it can accommodate more rain water runoff. Then I got some small stones from the 2-feet high retaining wall that I took off earlier and used this to line up the bottom of the swale/berm. This should reduce the flow of excess water runoff when it rains so it will not carry away the top soil from the garden. I already added some compost and rabbit manure into the raised bed at the bottom of the garden so this should help to control any water runoff from the rain. I'm thinking of putting a cover on this newly made raised bed at the bottom of the garden because I just dug it up yesterday so it is exposed to the rain. I am afraid that it might get washed out with this storm. I don't have any mulch available to cover this exposed soil but perhaps I'll find something tomorrow.

Planning the Backyard Garden

 We've been busy lately doing some shopping for a wedding gift for a friend who just got married today. So after we came home from the wedding, I took a short nap and when I woke up, my first thought was about expanding the backyard garden.  We only have 4 raised beds in the backyard garden. Two of these raised beds are short actually at just 6 feet long while the other two are 8 feet long. Two of the 6-feet long raised beds which is just behind the aviary gets the early morning sun.

The other two 8-feet long raised beds does not get the benefit of the morning sun because of the guava tree that is next to the outdoor aviary which is giving a shade to the garden. The entire garden gets the sun only from 11 in the morning until about 4 in the afternoon. The structure on the right side in the picture below is the outdoor aviary with the sun hitting the garden around mid day. I'm planning on trimming the branches of this guava tree so the sun can penetrate the garden at a much earlier time than at 11 a.m. It's just that I am hesitant to do this because this guava tree is the only one that is left after the other tree died. We don't know what caused its demise but we're guessing that perhaps the beetles must have something to do with it. When the tree died, there were a lot of beetles on the ground that fell down from the tree.

Anyway, the picture below is the end of the garden with the wire-fence concealed just behind the tall ferns and flowers. This is where I placed two of my worm bins and two extra blue pails for compost materials because it is shaded by the tall plants. This part is actually lower by 2 feet from the garden level. This 2-feet drop is held in place with a stone retaining wall which could not be seen in the picture because of the ferns and the flowers that grew in between the stone walls that is covering it. The space is about 3 feet wide with gravel over dirt and the rest is concrete. I am planning on converting this area into another raised bed to gain more space for planting vegetables. I was taking the measurements for this new expansion when the rains came so I had to go inside so it will have to wait until tomorrow.