Pavel314 wrote:
....
My wife's vegetable garden is on a sloped part of the yard. She constructed what she calls "barrows", raised ridges of dirt and compost, perpendicular to the fall line. These catch and slow the water as it flows downhill during a rain.

There's a central path going right down the fall line but she constructed "hydraulics" on that, raised sections between the rows to divert any flowing water off the main path into the paths between the barrows, where it will be slowed down and absorbed into the ground.

in the permaculture verbiage they call them swales.

with our soils and some storms being heavy i have been
designing our place to capture as much as possible but also
to deal with the flash floods.

all of this needed in our heavy clay soil, once it gets
soaked down well it doesn't hold more. that's at about 4-6
inches of rain depending upon how fast it comes down.

the following contains way more information than most
people want to read:

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


All of the paths are covered with landscape fabric to keep down the weeds.

it helps. we've used old chunks of carpeting in some
places and then put rinsed crushed limestone over it and
not much gets through that. luckily most of those types
of pathways are inside the fenced area or in front where
there aren't too many issues from neighboring areas trying
to send roots under the paths.

out back i have some more serious weeds that aren't
stopped by a shallow edge and some will run a dozen
feet horizontal under a pathway if given the chance.


songbird