Draining my backyard swamp

[JJT]

If you cannot drain the water, it's a good spot for a pond, and that will give you material to build up the surrounding area.

 

[MACflyer]

Spring seeding is usually not the best idea.
In the Spring, weeds and grass germinate simultaneously.
With Fall seeding, the grass seed germinates, but the weeds do not.
Then, in the Spring, the grass has a head start, and will choke out the weeds that are attempting to grow.

Thanks for the tip, I'll do it this fall instead.

 

[m1garand762]

Thank you everyone for the input, lots of good information. I think my best course of action will be to let it dry as suggested, and then I'll come through with a sub soiler to improve the compaction issue. Finally I'll dig another trench down to the creek and run a tile drain like in that video. The creek isn't big enough to worry about flooding my house, it's more of a swampy stream a few inches deep and this is at the wettest part of the year.

Drainage works wonders. My property was swampy when we bought it and I tiled it front to back and now it’s dry it took a few months for the tile to dry it out completely but I could see results after a week or so. One of the lines I buried on the other side of the creek has been running an inch stream for 2 years non stop you may be surprised by how much water you will be removing