I was driving past our allotment (Hagg House) at midday today and I thought I'd pop in and see if the strawberries had survived. They hadn't :sad:

However, that was the least of my worries. The row we are on was a river with thousands of gallons pouring off the hill. Unfortunately most of this seemed to be going down my allotment (no 18 ) doing its best to wash away what crops we had growing. We now have a lake, well two lakes, where the play area and remains of the old greenhouse were :cry:

I'm sure it can't be the only allotment on there affected like this. If I get chance later I'll take the camera to get some pictures and have a look to see which other plots seem to be affected.

I'm off to find some dry socks,

Rob

Cripes, really sorry to hear that Rob, I hope that some of your crops survive.

I am off for a fortnight from tomorrow and not sure whether to pop in this evening or not - might be best just to see how it all is on my return :(

Anyway, sorry I am not around to help out, but hope you have a good couple of weeks.

Dan (plot 43)

Oh No! I was there last night at 9.00 and it wasnt too bad, trip up tonight I think.. Good luck everyone..

RobD1 I have three nice giant pumpkins plants that are looking for a new home... I reckon we can have a plant whip round ;] .

Some pictures at about 3pm this afternoon - amazing just how much had already drained away. This is about half as much water as there was this morning.

The view down the lane:
http://bp3.blogger.com/_iGVPLJpBPms/RnKpzgNZ35I/AAAAAAAAAFQ/djseWrPH10k/s1600-h/flood1.jpg

The view through my gate:
http://bp0.blogger.com/_iGVPLJpBPms/RnKpzwNZ36I/AAAAAAAAAFY/l4AZSZgL73U/s1600-h/flood2.jpg

Where one of my beds used to be and the remains of the beans and sweet peas:
http://bp1.blogger.com/_iGVPLJpBPms/RnKp0ANZ37I/AAAAAAAAAFg/vOobpVNtRQI/s1600-h/flood3.jpg

Fortunately a bit of diverting later I am at least managing to save some of the water:
http://bp2.blogger.com/_iGVPLJpBPms/RnKp0QNZ38I/AAAAAAAAAFo/PnxSLz9TuYg/s1600-h/flood4.jpg

Unfortunately didn't get time to look round other other plots, sorry. Thanks for offer of plants, will let you know - away this weekend and probably best wait til stuff has dried out a bit I think :sad:

Hiya Rob

I was down earlier in the week and had a look in to yours.
Rest of the rain was in my spud patch.
Was in soft mud up to top of wellies bailing earlies out - thought your patch had survived a little better than mine sorry to hear stuff has been washed away!

see you later
Vic

sorry to heard about the flooding folks,keep your chins up and your spades in the dirt:D
we seemed to have escaped somehow on the rivelin site, even though some of us are on slopes too:huh:

guys, how terrible. Hope it dries out and stuff survives.

Hi Rob sorry to here about the damage the flooding has done - we were lucky !!

We went called down on Saturday just to check on things - returning for a 2 week holiday in sunny Crete and found a bit of a river running through our plot (75 & 76), the water was running in torrents down one side of the main path in the tyre tracks and had broke the bank. We managed to dig out the channel a little deeper to try and keep the water contained. Some of the problem seemed to stem from people trying to dam up where the water runs to try and collect some in dry weather !! OK until you get lots of rain and then it just goes everywhere but where it should be going.

Not sure what we can do about the water and I hope we don't get rain like this again but it may be worth bringing it up at the next meeting - the dams are definitly partly to blame. And also weeds and stuff being put into the tyre grooves to try and raise them we pulled several large stones out, it may be worth leaving them as water channels. We are quite far into the wood and managed to get the water to run past our plot - there is no one further into the wood than us - mainly because you can't actually get down the path its that over grown. But it did sound like almost a river running further into the woods.

Another problem is people getting the water so it runs off there plots but that can end up just redirecting it and making it worse for some one down hill !! Understandable but maybe it needs a collective decision on how to sort the problem out !!

Thats my rant over with !!

Lisa,

Unfortunately one of the consequences of climate change is the increase in frequency of this type of 'extreme' weather event. A friend of mine had problems with sewage flooding their garden during prolonged torrential rain. She had some work done by Yorkshire water 15 years ago that was designed to flood only once in every 30 years based on previous analysis of water flows.

It has flooded (leaving her garden strewn with sewage) every year for the past three years. There have always been floods of course but they are likely to get more frequent and more severe (unless we all do something about our CO2 emissions of course).

Rob - Really sorry to hear about/see the aftermath! Time to get cracking with the raised beds? Will post some pics today/tomorrow.

Something I have meant to bring up at the meetings is the underground drainage channels on our site. I stumbled upon one whilst digging a couple of months ago, the channels are about a foot wide and a 2 feet underground and covered with large flat stones and a foot or so of earth above that. I reckon that they must criss-cross the entire site and that they were constructed to prevent what has happened this week. My theory is that some of these have become silted up, causing this flooding along with the general bad drainage commonly experienced. I thought that maybe some council maps exist that show us these drainage courses alowing us to investagate further and possibly open them up if blocked.

Another idea I had came from watching Mr. Dick Strawbridge on 'It isnt easy being green' where they collected rainwater from building gutters and created an irrigation system for a large poly tunnel. Water collected in a 'sump' and was fed through channels to a pool in the tunnel. I thought that I could divert water from the channel to be stored in a pool for watering plants and then an overflow could divert it back into the channel.

I also heard that someone on the HH site had a greenhouse that had water channeled through it creating a good humid atmos, does anyone know about this?

Any thoughts?

Matt