In article ,
FredAt wrote:

Thank you for all the replies and the various links. I have done much
of the drainage around the house myself so I have a fair idea of what I
need to do in the garden area. I still have a couple of questions

a. As things stand the area is covered with a mix of weeds and garden
plants (the place used to be somebody's garden). Given that I will be
backfilling to a height of around 0.8m and then putting top soil do I
need to destroy the weeds first or can I simply rely on them being
smothered by the backfill - I have already used this material for my
driveway and know that weeds don't like it much.

b. One of the things I have considered doing on the embankment is making
a mini vineyard. I live not too far from the Moselle (really good
Luxemburgeois white wine) and I have noticed that many of the gardens in
the village have vines. On the Moselle I have noted that the vines are
planted on really steep slopes.
I'd call them cliffs, masquerading as vineyards. The steepness allows
the soil to dry out, and warm up as in Bernkastel.

I do have a fair bit of earth moving to do. By estimates around 10 cubic
meters of backfill and then 18 cubic meters of top soil - all to be done
with a Kubota mini excavator given that access to the garden is limited
to a width of around 1.5m.

It is going to be mid to late September by the time I finish all this so
not much chance of doing any gardening this year. What would be the best
thing to do between then and the Srping of next year?

I should mention that garden is oriented NE-SW. The embankment is at the
rear of the garden and is exposed to bright sunshine pretty much all the
time when there is no cloud cover. The other half of the "garden" gets
around 2-4h of sunshine before it finds itself in the shade of the house
itself.
If you mean that the slope faces (descends from the north-east) to the
south-west, that would be very good. How does the steepness of the slope
compare with other wine growers in your area? Sometimes it is good to
have stones in the vineyard to hold the daytime heat, into the night.

Thank you for the link to the "Lasagne" site. As someone else pointed
out given the volume I need to cover it is not practicable but I will be
able to put the information to good use later.

Lasagna gardening, is no dig gardening. This is good for your back, and
good for the soil, if it is well fed.
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arn3lF5XSUg
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/HZinn_page.html