Advantages And Disadvantages Of Slope Plots

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

A plot on a slope is a stroke of luck! If you have such a site, try to benefit from it

Most gardeners and gardeners prefer to deal with fairly flat areas. After all, it is easier on them to arrange the house together with other buildings and to set up a garden-vegetable garden. At the same time, plots on slopes, especially with a steep slope, are usually not popular, since the development of such areas requires an order of magnitude more labor. And all because of the complexities of the relief.

Therefore, when almost 30 years ago we took a garden plot on a slope, which turned out to be the only remaining unclaimed for 10 years of the collective garden's existence, although it had a much larger area in comparison with others, all the neighbors looked at us with great irony. They probably thought that we could not achieve anything here. However, everything turned out just the opposite: after a few years, the slope was covered with terraces with beds and garden plantings, and we managed to turn all the disadvantages of the slope into pluses, albeit at the cost of a lot of work.

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Disadvantages of slope sites

Everyone considers the most important disadvantage of plots on the slope that there are problems with the location of ridges and the placement of plantings. This, I will not hide, is really difficult. On level ground, of course, it is much easier to lay out a garden and garden beds. And this does not require any additional effort, because the site is flat, which means there are no elevation differences and specially built terraces.

On the slope, everything is different: you can't just place the beds there, and the bushes (with the exception, perhaps, of raspberries) and even more so, planting trees there is more than problematic. Why? It's simple - if you start leveling the slope, then by no means will you keep the fertile soil layer on the slope and you will not be able to ensure normal watering, since the water will flow down the slope, dragging everything in its path with it. The breakdown of ridges and planting will become possible only after the construction of terraces reinforced with stone or brickwork or concrete walls. The construction of such terraces is very laborious and not cheap.

The second significant drawback is the wind. As a rule, all areas on the slopes are exposed to strong winds, which rapidly dry out the soil. Therefore, you can water it indefinitely.

However, even here you can find a way out - to use a variety of agricultural techniques to prevent rapid evaporation of moisture from the soil. How?

First, mulch the plantings with any available materials: hay, cut grass, coniferous needles, chopped branches, etc. Vegetable beds can be mulched with sawdust or compost, potatoes - with hay, straw, sawdust, strawberries - with sawdust or coniferous needles, shrubs and raspberries - with bark from peeled trees, etc. A deep layer of mulch around each plant will help retain soil moisture and prevent erosion.

Secondly, you need to keep the ridges under the covering material as long as possible. To buy a covering material now is not a problem, and now it costs mere pennies. Therefore, it is possible and useful to keep the ridges under the covering material. You will be able not only to reduce the number of waterings, but also to provide plants with more comfortable conditions for development in terms of temperature, as well as to protect them from pests, for example, cabbage from all kinds of caterpillars, radishes, radishes and turnips from the ubiquitous flea, carrots from carrot flies and etc.

Thirdly, the hydrogel should be added to the soil, of course, as far as possible, because the soil hydrogel is quite expensive (from my own experience I can judge that in order to save money it is better to buy it from wholesale suppliers, and not in stores). These are polymers capable of absorbing large amounts of water and minerals. These polymers are saturated with a huge amount of water, and then gradually give it to plants as they need it. At the same time, the consumption of water introduced with irrigation becomes more economical - during irrigation or rain, the water is absorbed by the granules and no longer evaporates at great speed under the influence of wind and sun. The gel granules retain excess water and gradually release it - while the plants are always provided with water in the right amount. However, do not think that you will not have to water the plants at all - you will have to,just much less often.

As another serious drawback of the site on the slope, you can name possible problems with water supply, since the water itself does not want to flow upward by itself. Therefore, the construction of a well will cost you "a pretty penny", because its depth will be much greater than that of its neighbors. But this fact can be viewed from the other side: when drilling a deep well, you will have water from artesian layers (that is, most likely, healthy and tasty, although you may not be lucky). But the neighbors downstairs on a flat area, who were able to significantly save on the construction of wells, will never be able to boast of such water. Moreover, during the spring flood in their wells, anything will get into the water, and drinking it will already be simply dangerous to health.

True, water from a well is only one tap nuance. There is another. If you have a common water supply in your garden, from which water for irrigation is supplied in summer, then, from my own experience, I can say that problems are guaranteed here too. After all, the reservoir from which water is pumped is located much lower than your site. As a result, when water is supplied, it will go well with all neighbors, but you will see only a thin trickle of it and nothing more. So the problem of providing water for irrigation will have to be solved independently. We got out of this situation by digging our little pond and placing a lot of water tanks on the site. And there, and there, water is pumped from the well.

And one more feature: the illumination of the plots on the southern slopes (we have just this one) is noticeably stronger than in orchards and vegetable gardens on flat terrain. Of course, this is not a minus, but a huge plus, but in early spring this plus is partially transformed into a minus, since on such slopes in the bright sun and the presence of snow, plants are much more burned. This means that more attention will have to be paid to protecting them from sunburn: in late autumn (in our region in spring it is impossible to do this), whitewash the trunks of all fruit trees and protect the conifers growing in the garden from burns with covering material.

Finally, certain difficulties in building a house should be classified as a problem. However, most gardeners have small houses, and it is usually not so difficult to choose an initially flat enough section of the slope so that the house does not end up on the bulk land. As for the recommendations of architects in this regard, they advise building a house on the southern slope at the highest place. On the eastern and western slopes, it is better to place the house at the northern border of the site in a high place. With the least successful terrain, with a decrease to the north, it is better to put the house closer to the western border.

Difficulties may arise in the construction of other structures, including greenhouses, although everything is not so problematic with them, since if there is a reliable foundation, the greenhouse can even be placed directly along the slope. On our site, one greenhouse stands exactly like this: the height of the foundation, respectively, is different - lower along the slope, the height is higher, higher up the slope - less. As for the soil level inside the greenhouse, it is, of course, the same.

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Advantages of slope plots

The garden-garden on the slope (especially on the southern one!) Also has advantages. In my opinion, the most significant advantage is the better illumination already mentioned above. Anything, but a lack of sunlight in your garden will definitely not be. This means that with some effort and some knowledge, you can get much larger yields than would be possible on a flat area.

More to come … In early spring, you can start gardening a little earlier than your neighbors, as the soil on the slopes warms up faster in spring and the area is illuminated for longer during the day. During the frost period, your plants will have a much higher chance of not being harmed, since in the upper and middle parts of the slope (compared to the flat surface below) the effect of frost is noticeably weaker.

As a result, berry bushes, fruit trees, potatoes and other plants on your plots will not be affected, unlike neighboring plantations. I have been convinced of this for more than one year. Agree, this is a serious plus in a difficult and cold climate.

The same thing happens at the end of August (sometimes in the middle - there is no year for a year), when the potato tops in our zone turn black everywhere from frosts in neighboring areas, and in our garden the potato tubers continue to quietly pour.

Naturally, the fact that certain plants are susceptible to frost must be taken into account when placing them on a slope. So, apple trees, plums and cherries are planted in the upper part of the slope, where the threat of damage to flowers by spring frosts is less, and the middle parts of the slopes are often allocated for a variety of shrubs.

Numerous cold-resistant vegetables, which, moreover, can be easily covered from frost with covering material, can be successfully placed at the bottom of the slope. Strawberries can also grow in this zone, which, when its spring processing is transferred to a later period, wakes up later, and therefore, most likely, before the end of the frost, it will not have time to form flower shoots, which means that you will not lose the first harvest due to frosts. Well, if necessary, you can also throw covering material on the strawberries.

It is also worth noting that on the slope it is possible to carry out a clear, sometimes to complete isolation, functional zoning of individual parts of the garden. Parts of the garden are separated here not only by walls - they are separated by different levels, through which it is possible to differentiate, for example, an orchard and high, raised vegetable beds.

And, finally, on the slopes, landscape design lovers have almost unlimited prospects for imagination - here you can build spectacular steps with mini-terraces, a mountain stream, a waterfall, and all sorts of alpine slides and rockeries and other delights. Try to build an alpine slide artificially! It will turn out to be much more difficult than arranging it on a suitable fragment of the slope.

Also read:

How to plan a plot on a slope: terraces