I got a little crazy with GIMP the other day.
Did you know that drawing out garden beds into a perfect, seamless panorama and getting the perspective even close to believable can be quite challenging? Very worth it, though, because now I can just take a quick looksie and be instantly transplanted back to the holler when I need to do a little daydreaming.
Jay thought I went a little overboard with the wildflowers, but I say you can't have enough for the native pollinators.
Don't worry, there are more panoramas to come. It will be fun to see how close we get to making the land actually look like my handiwork.
Are you running the raised beds up and down the hill rather than perpendicular to the slope? I've done it both ways, and each has its pros and cons. You'll get a lot of erosion your way if you till, but if you've got a lot of excess water, it can be a *good* thing to run the rows down the slope. (Now I'm thinking I need to write a blog post about this. :-) )
ReplyDeleteIt's kinda hard to tell with the wide angle perspective, especially when looking toward the smaller cabin, but all the beds are running on contour (parallel) with the slope (the lawn area all runs downhill toward the driveway, although it doesn't appear that way). I might be a little off with the bed direction, but it should be fairly close (I'll use that A-frame method to mark them all out when the time comes). There were only a few patches of lawn that were a bit squishy when we were out there in early December (lots of rain), so I think the drainage is fairly good.
DeleteI'm coming to the conclusion that I will need some sort of hard barrier on the bottom end of each bed due to the slope. Or maybe plant something with a tangled root structure that can hold them up but that doesn't take over the bed?
I was talking with our neighbor in April and asked him about irrigation because I noticed that none of the garden patches I see near us have sprinklers or drip systems or anything for that matter. He said that no one ever irrigates, except maybe by hand at the end of the summer, but I really don't want to put any excess pressure on our spring because we just don't know what its capacity is. So I figure putting in the time to dig the swales now will pay off in the long run even if they're a bit overboard.
Fascinating! Look forward to more panoramas.....
ReplyDeleteThat must be you, Mom! :)
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