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Rain barrel overflow wrecked my raised bed, fixed it with a gutter tweak

We had that storm last Tuesday in Knoxville dump about 2 inches in an hour and my 50 gallon barrel overflowed straight into my cucumber bed. Roots sat in water for two days before I noticed, plants looked awful. I ended up adding a short downspout extension that routes the overflow away from the bed and into a gravel trench I dug. Has anyone else dealt with overflow sneaking back into their garden, or did you just cap the barrel entirely?
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the_miles
the_miles7d ago
Wait, you let the water sit in there for two full days before you even looked at them? I mean I get that life gets busy but I would've been out there in like an hour knowing how fast cucumbers go downhill. That root rot is no joke. The gravel trench idea is solid though, I did something similar after my barrel dumped straight into my tomato bed one summer. Did you put any fabric down under the gravel to keep it from clogging over time?
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