Hillside erosion protection / ground cover
mcmahonvincent
3 years ago
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drought resistant ground cover? Pictures
Comments (17)I'm not a landscape architect or a landscaper --- just a homeowner/gardener ---- but those photos scare me too. Kind of reminds me of the dropped backyard in my first house. All the land slopes down to your windows and the open garage. I don't know what kind of underground drainage system you have, but it does look like the front lawn is higher than the back lawn. That's worrisome because it could mean the lowest part of your property is where the house was placed. And the fact that the water level of the pond is higher than the basement windows is another red flag. I'm guessing that the drainage from your downspouts and any runoff goes into those drains outside the windows? If that were my house, I would not landscape on those slopes. Anything you plant there will need to be watered, which would only cause more water to flow down the hills. I agree that some kind of hardscape work is needed instead. Is it possible to have a walled patio area in front of the windows and the open garage? Believe me when I tell you this --- water table levels can change in a neighborhood and builders can do some crazy things! In my old neighborhood, a builder put up a house in on a wet lot that was below the road level. There was a trickling steam that ran across the lot and down to a river. We watched as the basement floor was poured on the earth and the foundation walls were cemented sraight UP from the ground. Then the builder mapped out the septic field by marking about 10/12 feet up on the trunks of trees! (no lie) He hauled in 'dirt' (lots of sand) to raise up the ground to the level of the road. Granted, this was 30 years ago in a small town, but geez! We often wondered when those streams would decide to percolate up into the basement. Water can do some crazy things. Molie...See MoreFull Sun Hillside Covers
Comments (5)I can help you out here. Periwinkle. (vinca) I took some by the roots, it grew wild down by a creek and transplanted it here and there in front of our retaining wall in the front of our property and on the hillside beside our house and in a year it spread quite nicely on it's own from about a dozen little plants. I didn't have access to town, I did what I could with what I had, back then I didn't have the internet or credit cards, that was a long time ago. I lived in the mountains in CA, it snowed in the winter and the vines would die back some and still double or more come spring and summer better than ever and hold the hill side back against the rains and snow melt. I believe we were zone 7 then. I hope this helps you. Deer did not like to eat the periwinkle either, they left it alone in the 13 years we lived there. Because of the mountains I didn't have a sprinkler system and threw some water on the roots I could reach from time to time but they really survived on whatever water they received on rainfall, some years good, some bad, but year after year the periwinkle always returned bigger and better than ever. Didn't matter on hills, they climb on their own or over rocks, I mentioned mountains? Our temps went to 17 below....See MoreShade Tolerant Ground Cover to Stop Stormwater Erosion
Comments (59)Zack, I didn't post it because I hole heartedly agree with it. Again the "truth" might lie somewhere in the middle. I read "at" issues from many sides. The rancher manages 35,000 acres and I have found that controlling 17 acres is about making choices that have me riding a world where I do not control everything that comes my way. I can only imagine what the uncontrollable issues that he surfs. He has documented yellow star thistle patch and has found that it usually goes away after a decade if left alone. I found that surprising, even confusing. KR bluestem is a species that many people love to hate here in Texas. Yet I do see the butterflies going for their inflourescens during migration. I also see the native bluestem multiplying in the front field amongst them. It appears that on dry summers, it does not make much of an appearance or a very late one, giving the natives a chance to compete.. I know that I do not have the financial nor energy resources to dig them all out. Fire was said to control it but now they have back tracked on it. I am trying to keep it out of the valley where I have a delightful native community of Muhlenbergia s of different sorts. Nor do I want to poison everything out only to have the wind bring more to the empty soil. I was interested in the Monsanto angle of the board of directors mentioned in this Book review .It is more of the same thinking and written by David Theodoreopolis of J L Hudson Seedman fame, so he does have skin in the game and makes money selling possible invasive exotics AND natives. He is a controversial figure. I do find what he says about the fear of change valid and where do we stop the ecological clock since it is a forever changing thing. I just wish it would not change so fast. I have also and aesthetic concern about loosing some ground hugging spring ephemerals to the always land hungry bastard cabbage. Like I said, I do not agree with everything. that he says. I do find that much of the language used by some do or die native guys to be wishy washy as to what is a native and what is not. At the land conservationist meeting here in texas, there are 2 camps about the invasive grass KR Bluestem. 1 states it is a bad bad monoculture forming invasive that is good for nothing and and the other camp says it is a good land stabilizer and good at getting water to penetrate down to the water table. Another is that burr clover that was used as green manure and escaped. It grows in patches and I am tired of digging it up and it will improve my soil. My soil needs soil improvement desperately since invasively farmed cows have been overgrazing it for decades before I got here. Maybe it will disappear as it incorporates nitrogen into the soil.The soil washed away. I won't plant uncontrollable non natives because of the guilt if they escape issue. I prefer natives but I am a practical minded human when it comes to picking battles of whom I eradicate, where and how. The info keeps changing. I do not want to cause harm. But I do not know what is harm sometimes. My thinking is changeable about this subject. There is a lot on his site that is interesting. He uses Holistic land management ideas. He brings up that the removal of all herd animals off the grasslands and high deserts is harmful. .Balancing them is essential but these lands always had herd animals of sorts and many of the natural ones are gone and the niche is filled by cows. There is a connection between the desert tortoise populations and the herding of cows now. Desert tortoise populations have gone down where the removal of all cows have happened. Go figure. The politics of Rancher removal by the BLM is very troubling. Then they seem to give the rights of the land off to Uranium miners. Yes there is uranium under the Hammond's land. OOPS I didn't mean to open that can of worms....See MoreWinter ground cover
Comments (6)"What methods do you employ to ensure the garden bed stays as fertile and workable as possible next spring?" At this late date there isn't much else I can do in my zone 6 location. It all depends on what your site is like I guess. I have lawn, surrounded by shrub borders and a long mixed border with perennials and grasses and that has plenty of plants in it so I'm not worried about soil erosion. I also don't have a windy site, being on level ground surrounded by trees to the North and West for the most part. So a layer of chopped leaves in addition to the bark mulch that was on there all summer, is all I think I need. I have another bed that is frequently changing with mostly perennials and this year, I pulled out a lot of plants and so there is a large area that is empty, so I did add a thick layer of half finished compost and a layer of leaves gone through the lawn mower on top of that. My vegetable beds are raised with a foot high wooden frame and those beds get most of my attention in the Fall. Once I pulled out spent plants, I dug in a lot of kitchen scraps, torn up cardboard, the finished pea foliage. I buried those mostly around the edges and in the corners, so I can still plant early around the scraps. I also added a thick layer of more chopped up leaves. Some years I sow a cover crop in any areas that are empty, but that would have needed to be done back in September. I did that last year, so I'm skipping it this year. Some years if I want to expand a bed, I do it in the Fall because I can layer in a lasagna method, along the area that is being expanded and no digging out lawn in the spring. I find by doing this, the soil is in very good shape in the spring and lots of worms when I start to work it. I was just reading a book written by an Amish gardener. She used a radish crop, that she sows in late summer/early fall, that she turns under in the spring and she found this improved her soil a lot. Again, we are talking about the vegetable garden. Another thing she did to improve her soil, was to add spent mushroom compost as a mulch and hay that was sitting for 2 years out of the way on the property would be carted to the vegetable beds and used for mulch during the growing season. Although she did say she didn't enjoy using it because of all the critters in the hay by the time she was ready to use it. That's about all I do. Some people might add lime or wood ashes in the fall in areas where it was needed....See Morelaceyvail 6A, WV
3 years agokitasei
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3 years agoYardvaark
3 years agomcmahonvincent
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2 years agochamaegardener (Z5) Northeast Illinois
2 years ago
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