Kitchen Garden Forum

A Scottish farmer was faced with the extraordinary sight of his carrots standing upright above the ground after a nearby river burst its banks and washed away the soil around them.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -them.html

Amazing. Don't they just look so good and healthy to. Wish I could grow them like that; all so uniform.

Beryl.

Amazing that the carrots are still standing, presumably for the soil to washed away so easily it was very sandy. Maybe they're still standing because the foliage.

That is a huge depth of soil to lose. without natural soil structure a drought and high wind would have done the same.

I'd give my right arm to be able to grow nice healthy straight carrots like that but I imagine next year's sowing will be difficult, having lost such a large amount of topsoil. I can't imagine how you can ever replace that amount of it and how the loss must affect future crop growing.

Quite a normal thing really, the River Stort near Harlow on Hunsdon meads consists of a canal and river, sometimes one channel, sometimes two channels. In very wet weather it floods these meads which were the original pre-canalisation floodplain, in doing so every now and then it attempts to carve a fresh, more direct, channel for itself across the fields.

Quickly restored by JCB, the silt lost in one place ends up in another. The effects of floodwater will carve away the best soils with ease, it just needs sufficient volume of water in a small enough area. Behind the drama seeking newspaper photographer was probably a massive fan of silt spread out for tens if not hundreds of yards across the field. That or the riverbed downstream somewhere will need dredging.

Thoroughly recommend "Taming the flood." by Jeremy Purseglove, explains nearly all our water management mistakes. http://www.amazon.com/Taming-Flood-Hist ... 0192860917