Pavel314 wrote:
....
Our garden is on a slight slope, so my wife came up with a method to slow erosion. She made raised mounds perpendicular to the fall line of the hill so that the water gathers up behind them and slows the current. On the long paths between garden sections that follow the fall line, she dug dips between the perpendicular mounds and made small hills between the mounds, again to slow the rush of water and channel it behind the mounds where the vegetables are planted.

in some places they have farmed for so long that
each season they take dirt from the bottom of the
field and move it back to the top.

it helps a great deal to have the terrace edges
planted with something to hold the soil in place
and also to mulch any bare dirt so the rains don't
hit it so directly to break it off where it can
wash away.

a contour line can be detected by an A frame or
any kind of level. contours are great to know for
an area because if you are going to do any terracing
you'd want the terraces to be level and on contour
lines to keep as much water in place to soak in
instead of washing your topsoil away.

here it is so flat that our contours only vary by
a few feet over the whole course of the property.
still i do plan and arrange everything to take the
water flows into account as even with such small
drops it can still take your topsoil, organic matter
and nutrients away.

and i have to be aware of what is potentially
coming at us from "uphill".


http://www.anthive.com/project/water/


songbird