Hillside vegetable garden

[JustNorthofDFW]

Hi all. I just started a herb garden in the spring. It was my first garden, and so I've decided to take the plunge and do vegetables for this fall. I've got my seeds waiting in my terrariums.

While I was digging up my yard, I thought about the problem of land erosion. Whenever it rains, the good top soil that I've bought will slide down my hilly backyard (whenever it rains) and into my neighbor's very lush backyard. I would like to get any hints on how to effectively retain my soil's nutrients and keep it for myself .

Thanks for reading

[n8young]

tiered retaining walls???

[DoubleDogFarm]

Retaining walls is a good approach, but I perfer berms and swales on contour. The swales are dead level and slow the movement of water.

Keyline swales
https://permaculturenews.org/2009/11/30/ ... ty-hybrid/

Eric

[JustNorthofDFW]

Thanks! I'll try the garden swale.

[TheWaterbug]

How steep is it? Can you post a picture of your garden area, taken as near to true level as possible so we can see the slope?

I think the short answer is "terracing" of some sort. It doesn't have to industrial-grade; it just has to be enough to keep the water where you need it until it can soak into the ground.

I did some lightweight terracing for my Mom's garden by pounding in 4' lengths of rebar to hold a couple of 2x12s and then leveling the soil. I didn't even fasten the 2x12s to the rebar; the weight of the soil uphill keeps them in place.

My neighbors have done fancier terraces by pounding in 1" diameter piping and then securing redwood 2x12s in place with pipe mounts.

We have heavy clay in my area, so once a pipe or rebar piece has penetrated 12"-18" of soil it's not going to move for 20 years or until it rusts away. If you have something looser you may have to drive it in a lot deeper.

[caligrown]

My garden is on a Hillside. The bottom has a nice retaining wall and then I leveled out steps and each step is held up by a row of cinder blocks, it holds up nicely. Best part about using cinder blocks you can plant in the holes.

[JustNorthofDFW]

Thanks guys, you are great. I'm afraid that the Keystone Swale method is a little hard for me to grasp. I loved geology class, but the map portion drove me nuts! I've ditched the permaculture sight in favor of watch Geoff Lawton's videos.

I have some pictures of my yard, but I can't figure out how to post them on the message board. It just shows a link except for the first one, but I don't even know how I got the url: 4.bp.blogspot.com

I've put two other pictures on my blog: https://justnorthofdfw.blogspot.com/2013 ... -yard.html