Raised beds

Pasty said:

That's an interesting thought. Plenty of steep around here.

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I would be interested to hear reports from you if you do decide on that approach. I am sure you are aware of the terraced vineyards in the Douro and some of the German vine areas on extremely steep slopes. Similarly terraced olives were common here too. There are still a few areas. I know of one about 20 miles from where I live, but it appears to be neglected now. Hearsay only, but I am told that vegetables, and occasionally a fruit tree instead of a vine or olive, were planted in these terraces.

There is still a lot of scope in these places for people who are prepared to put in hard work. I reckon you, @KMA, and a few others that post in this section of the forum would really enjoy the challenge of a few acres around here. Obviously you would not make much (if any) money, but you would enjoy life if you eat meat, cheese, lots of vegetables, drink wine, and do not tell the locals how to do things - just do it your way and let them slowly realise for themselves that there is more than one way to skin a cat.

If one was to do terraces, do you dig or build up, if you see what I mean? I guess it depends what is underneath to some extent. Either way I assume each 'edge' needs a spporting structure of some kind.

@Pasty The ones I have seen for grapes and olives are built up. Build a dry stone wall and fill in behind it with organic matter, soil etc. if available, and plant. They drain well enough. I would imagine that the stone for the walls would be taken from the area that becomes the planting area rather than be carried onto the site. That would be a herculean task.

Along steep river valleys, the Douro being Portugal's prime example, the walls tend to be long. There is often no natural soil and so initially I understand the grape vines were planted into the broken rock/shale. Eventually the soil improves, but grapes produce good quality wines in "soils" that would not support much else. Their roots go down tens of feet. These terraces are often wide enough that donkey carts could travel on a flattened track between the terraced rows of vines. If not, it was hand humping. Modern equipment has changed it all so that they bulldoze tracks where needed when planting new vineyards. The same steep hillside of the river valley is still used to grow the grapes for Port and Douro Whites and Reds. I have not seen the Rhine vineyards, but from photographs they appear to be the same.

For olive trees the walls are built for each tree individually because it saves a lot of wall building as the trees are spaced much further apart than vines. The walls are in the form of part of a circle - however much of the circle as is needed to meet up with the slope of the hill. There are thousands, possibly millions, of such trees. They are mainly neglected now as far as I have seen because the olives have to be carried off by hand. Millions of olive trees on the flat are similarly neglected but that is because the owners have left the land, or lived elsewhere when it was inherited.

The advantage of these terraces or individual "planters" for trees is that the work is done on a flat area and not a steep hillside; the vines or trees are in a deep bed; and there is no erosion because each terrace stops any downward movement of runoff. Obviously exactly on the contour is ideal for the long terraces, but I suppose that is not always possible. The height of the wall (for vines) depends on the steepness of the hill. For olives it appears to be whatever was convenient to form a big enough "planter".

KMA said:

If I was building a big terrace like along a hillside, I'd dig down and throw up if you see what I mean, you'd have to dig over the soil anyway, then support the lower 'edge' of each terrace with a dry stone wall

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You posted as I was replying to Pasty. As far as I know only sufficient stone to build the wall was removed from the area where the grapes were to be planted. As posted, there is often no soil as such so "digging" in the conventional sense is not really an option.

I have similar ground here that my wife has been making into ornamental gardens. She just needs to get a bush or shrub started and she can keep it going. She has to do weeding immediately after a decent fall of rain because there is no soil for her to dig up the weeds and she has to rely on the roots being slightly easier to pull out when it is wet. It works.

KMA said:

@Old MacDonald fascinating as usual, such a shame all the hard work that was put in is now neglected and going to ruin.

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It is not going to ruin The trees are neglected, but these walls will stand for many centuries. There are numerous Roman walls, bridges, aquaducts etc. in Portugal. They are not ruined - except where various idiotic armies have used them for target practice, like the French did with the Sphynx, but they are neglected. The trees could be brought back into production, it just takes somebody with the will to do it.

I suspect your story about the dead donkey is a myth. Never heard it before, but a similar story is that in this locality the best producing quince trees are planted on top of a Frenchman. Napolean's troops were stationed in and around what is now my house for a few days during the Peninsular campaign and the rumour is that the soldiers, being French, went looking for stray crumpet at night - some were caught, slaughtered and buried with a quince planted over the top of them.

My wife prefers to dig out each weed by hand and ensure it is like Monty Python's dead parrot - totally dead, deceased, etc. etc. I do spray nearby and along her edging stones, but she does like to be at close quarters wiht her foe.

@KMA - that all looks very organised. I've not got my spuds in yet, and I'm down in Sussex so should probably have managed it a few weeks ago. I saw my dad yesterday and his potatoes are already coming through the ground.

For container growing this probably isn't so relevant, but I have found that growing mustard between the rows of potatoes reduces wireworm. I heard of this somewhere ages ago, and have to say it seems to work. I think it's simply that the mustard is in the cabbage family, and the smell confuses the wireworm so they can't home in on the potatoes as easily. As I grow my vegetables on an allotment, the advantage is that there will be plenty of other potatoes being grown elsewhere nearby on other people's plots which they can then target instead. I realise this doesn't make me sound very public spirited, but unfortunately the reality of trying to prevent pests is that successful prevention will often mean the pest goes somewhere else.

I know the feeling. We lived in a modern (70s) house in the village for a while which had a retaining wall about 6' off the back wall and a garden going up from there. I decided we needed a bigger space out back so took down the wall and removed the 'soil'. You wouldn't believe what the builders had dumped in there.

@KMA is now demolishing a rockery...type thing in front of the house and is using the decorative gravel to line his top terrace.

He now has two new fweinds - a huge feck off v. unhappy tarantula that had me running away screaming and this little chap, which google says is a juvenile palmate newt.