I am slowly restoring the badly damaged soil on two small parcels of
land. Both are on slopes and I am also gradually terracing them.
Terracing is not a natural condition, but most people would consider
it an improvement on the original.

Couple of things I've observed. Purslane loves nitrogen and sucks ths
soil dry. Cheatgrasses do not like too much nitrogen. Some of the
major weeds of disturbed soils do the soil rather a lot of good. Two
examples are Kochia and redroot pigweed. Both are annuals that grow
deep taproots.

Starting out, there was zero organic matter hence absolutely no worms.
Compaction was significant, and rain water mostly ran off. The soil
is still far from heathy but the patches where I began are far better
now. They grow grass, all kinds of grass. I pull up clumps of grass
and transplant the clumps into other spots where I have previously
mulched heavily with horse manure. A few years ago I started pulling
all mustard weeds, just so that none managed to set seed. Then there
were no mustards so I started pulling pigweed ditto. This year there
was nearly no pigweed so I started pulling kochia. What is left? An
increasingly varied abundance of native perennial wildflowers (mallows
and asters, mostly) and grasses. I have started digging wildflowers
and distributing them to gardening friends, leaving the grasses to
fill in the holes. Next summer I expect I will be pulling kochia
again, and purslane, and then I'll be done with weeding that parcel!
I won't worry about the cheatgrasses; they won't be able to compete
with the perennial grasses that are coming in now.

Una