One of our fun projects this past winter was creating a greywater wetland to deal with the water coming out of our kitchen sink.  You can read more about the wetland by following the links below:

• Inspiration for the wetland.  (Be sure to follow the links at the bottom of the post for the rest of the lunchtime series.)
  
• Planning the wetland
• Digging out the wetland area
• Planning the pipes
• Rocking in the inlet to prevent erosion
• Installing the pipes
• More on the pipes (and pond)
  
• Greywater wetland's first inundation
• Plans for the future
  

So far, the wetland has been quite effective, although it has the usual growing pains.  I'll show you what's working (and what's not) below.

The water from our kitchen sink is enough to keep the area where I planted cattails (just below the inlet) sodden.  This has resulted in very happy plants, one of which is putting up a flowering spike.  I'm ultra-excited about the spike because I've wanted to taste cattail flowers ever since Eric blogged about them, but I'm too busy at this time of year to make weekly trips to the wetland up the holler to check on the cattails' progress.  This year, we'll definitely get to taste at least one cattail flower!

The pond is also doing very well, and has already produced half a gallon of duckweed for the garden.  Too bad our chickens still won't eat the stuff....  If we had a much larger pond, though, I could see harvesting duckweed to use as a high-nitrogen mulch around seedlings.

You'll notice I also installed a Chinese lotus in the little pond (which is just barely deep and large enough to keep such a hefty plant happy).  The inspiration for the lotus came from Paradise Lot, whose author explains that the seeds produced by lotuses are large, tasty nuts.  (I'll admit that lotuses are also one of the few ornamental plants I just love and would install without a use.)

The one failed experiment related to the pond is the mushroom logs serving as a retaining wall on the banks.  While the logs work well and do help anchor the pond visually, they weren't shaded enough, so the bark dried up and flaked off, killing the fungi.  This experiment might have worked if I'd had the shrubs established on the retaining wall a year before adding the mushroom logs, but shouldn't be repeated as-is.

Another factor to consider if you're replicating our design is maintenance.  Without a weedeater, it would be much tougher to keep the irregular edges of the wetland in line, but, luckily, Mark is a pro at cutting exactly where I ask him to.  (This is a trait to put on your list for World's Best Permaculture Husband, in case you're still single.)

Okay, this picture isn't really informative, but I love the elderberry flowers and our wringer washer together.

And, speaking of beauty, the pond is attracting lots of fascinating (and useful) life, like the damselfly above.  A frog has also taken up residence, and a large black rat snake slithered away when I approached to take photos.

Okay, I can hear you saying, but what about the primary purpose of the wetland --- dealing with greywater?  On the plus side, we no longer have a swamp in the path outside our back door, and the wetland itself doesn't seem to have any odor or to attract Lucy's attention.  However, in the last month, we've noticed a swampy smell wafting up the pipes into the kitchen sink. 

Oddly enough, we never had a smell problem from our much lower-tech drain-out-back, which makes me think the issue is that I didn't get the junction between the ten-foot pieces of pipe completely level.  If that area dipped down, food scraps (or just nutrient-rich water) could collect there and rot anaerobically, creating the swampy smell.

The short-term solution seems to be leaving the strainers in the sink, which blocks nearly all the smell.  In the longer-run, our first fix attempt will be to hook up at least one of the gutter outlets to each of the greywater lines (as originally planned) so heavy rains will flush out any pockets of food.  If that fails, we can always add a trap to our sink drains as Dirk suggested, which should block any smell from wafting back into the house.

That small problem aside, we wholly recommend the greywater wetland for those of you living in climates with cold winters and plenty of rain.  If you want to put the greywater to more use (and don't have freezing winters), you might instead check out mulch basins.  But, whatever you do, don't waste energy by sending greywater down the drain into a sewage system!