12 Ideas For Landscaping On A Slope

For all of you who have been stopping by diy Design Fanatic for awhile, you know that I LOVE gardening.

I love everything, well, just about everything about it.

I love transforming an outdoor space from an idea to a beautiful garden. 

We took our backyard from wild, vine covered woods and made it into a garden we enjoy.

Our current home has a slope starting at the middle of the house, down into the backyard. 

I can tell you from experience that gardening on a slope can present a challenge, especially if the slope is very steep. 

But, even though gardening on a slope can be a challenge, there are many beautiful ways to make it both useful,  practical and beautiful.

Hometalk.com asked me if I would curate a board for ideas on how to garden on a slope and so here it is.

You can find the board HERE which has comments or tips for each photo. 
You can also just click on the pic and it will take you directly to my Hometalk board.

 

 Hometalk has some pretty awesome projects on it's site that people submit and you don't have to be a blogger to do so! 

You can even ask a question about a problem you've been having with your landscape or home decor project. 

To see more of my gardening projects,  you can click the following links:

Wood Planter Boxes HERE

Raised Beds On A Slope HERE

Garden Before And After HERE

Spring Garden (pretty pics) HERE

Hope you have a beautiful day!

Pam

Raised Bed Update

The plants in our vegetable garden are filling in nicely...some with a little trial and tribulation!

Shown here is what we call our South Garden. Mr. Fanatic gets a kick out of me calling it that because our garden really isn't that big.  Veggies in our terraced raised beds are doing pretty well, with a couple of exceptions. But, I'll get to that later.

I can't tell you how happy I am with the Romaine and Head lettuce we planted. The lettuce I planted last year was that fancy, high falutin stuff and I didn't like it.

Give me Romaine and Iceberg because I love the crunch!

Zucchini, Butternut squash and Cucumbers growing on the trellis in the second bed below the electrical meter. Broccoli and Snap Peas growing on the trellis in the 3rd bed from the top. Collards and Onions in the fourth box. I'll tell ya about the hoops later...

The Snap Peas have been producing wonderful pods for the last few weeks. We had them in stir fry last night and they were tasty.

Closeup of an itty bitty Cucumber. This is the first time I've grown them.

There are a couple of larger cucumbers growing on the vines, as well.

The Cucumber plants are growing nicely on the trellis.

I'm getting excited about the Zucchini. Little Zucchini are already starting to form. See the one just below the large flower?

Here's how the North Garden looks now. 

No, we don't have a covered wagon in our raised bed. lol. We had some trouble with those little white butterflies I thought were cute...

...until they laid caterpillar eggs, which became caterpillars, that ate holes in my Broccoli leaves. After uploading this photo I realized there was one of those nasty critters on one of the leaves. Do you see him?

I went right outside after seeing the photo to get him.

Got him!

This broccoli head is getting big.

Anyway, the hoops covered with the white fabric over the Broccoli and Cabbage keep the butterflies from laying eggs on the leaves. I feel like I'm playing hide and go seek when the cover is put on. My cat Buddy loves to sleep in the bed when the cover is on. He's too cute. Regarding getting rid of the infestation of caterpillars: I also sprayed them with BT, (bacillus thuringiensis) which is an organic caterpillar killer 
: ) Took care of most of them, but I still go out every day and check the leaves.

Mr. Fanatic made the cage for the tomatoes last week because last year some critter ate every single tomato off one of our tomato plants that was planted on this side of the yard.

 That's not happening this year!

Can anyone explain this to me???  

The big plant on the left and the little one on the right are both Summer Squash and were both planted from seed at the same time. Looks like a commercial for Miracle Grow, but that's not the case. Both plants were treated exactly the same. Can't figure this one out.

The first row of Potatoes  I planted are dying and falling over. 

This is a GOOD thing. 

That means the potatoes are almost ready to dig up. Don't tell anyone, but I've already stolen a few and they were tasty. Yukon Gold potatoes are our favorite.

Here's the view of our North Garden from our deck. Herbs are growing to the left of the raised beds. 

It's pretty amazing that only a few months ago our raised beds looked like this:

Hope you enjoyed the tour of our Vegetable Garden.

Pam

Raised Beds

Yes, it's really true! I've been telling you about our raised bed garden for months and I'm FINALLY going to reveal the four bee-u-tee ful raised beds Mr. Fanatic made for me several months ago. 

I hope you have a comfy place to sit because I have A LOT to show you!

 Here's a quick glimpse of what's currently growing...Romaine lettuce.

 Isn't it gorgeous?

The raised bed project has been a long time in the making. Last year Mr. Fanatic made me four terraced beds on the South side of our house. After a successful year of gardening in them, we started planning an expansion of gardening space. Here what was planned...

Here is a before photo of the North side of the yard looking into our backyard.. Our lot has very little sun because of all the woods we have. We have two strips of on the lot where we get the 6+ hours of sun needed to grow most veggies. 

On the North side of the yard (left side of the photo), there were 3 very large Leyland Cypress trees that we had to take out. The center tree had caught something and was dying and we figured we'd have all three trees removed to make room for our new North Garden. I had a difficult time with taking them down since it afforded us so much privacy, but it was only a matter of time before the other trees caught whatever the middle tree had.

This is another before photo. You can see one of the Leyland Cypress trees on the far left of the photo. The 9 little plants in front of the pot are the potato plants we grew last year.

Here's how the North side of the yard looked after the Leylands were taken out. The 4 large shrubs are on our neighbor's property. Pretty dismal looking at this point, but I had a vision.

In January, Mr. Fanatic built 4 raised beds out of 2 x 8's. Each bed is apx. 4 feet by 10 feet. (The ends are 4 ft wide and the length is 10 ft + the width of the ends)

Many people make them out of cedar, but that wood is so expensive and this wood should last several years. We finished the outside with a sealing stain, but the inside was finished with a non-toxic stain made from whey.

The most difficult part of this project was terracing the slope...which meant digging out the dirt. I did this by myself, by hand, with a shovel.

Wire "cloth" was attached to the bottom of the boxes so that critters wouldn't tunnel under the boxes and get our veggies.

At this point, we were filling the boxes with dirt. Mr. Fanatic filled  them with several trailer's full of dirt.

Here all the raised beds are filled with dirt and mulch we had just put down the hardwood mulch around the beds. The little dark rows on the right front bed mark where I planted carrot seeds.

Here's the North side of our yard looking into the backyard. Disregard the grass line. I hadn't dug the trench yet! Still working on it, but it's almost done as I write this! :)

I planted two shrubs which will grow quickly and keep the garden from view from the front yard.

Looking toward the front yard.

Here's a photo of the raised beds from our deck. 

This photo was taken about 3 weeks ago; everything has grown since then.

Potatoes are growing tall. The tall ones were planted several weeks ahead of the others.

The sugar snap peas are now well past the second rung on the trellis. The purple cabbage haven't grown much.

As potatoes grow taller, more dirt has to be added to cover the base of the plant so the potatoes growing under the dirt don't  see sunlight, otherwise they will turn green.

This is where my herb garden will be. The 3 plants are basil.

I planted oregano seeds to the left of the gold pot and mint on the right in the pot. Evidently, mint  will take over if you let it. I read somewhere on the internet  that planting it in a sunken pot will keep it from spreading too much. I've also planted parsley to the right of the pot since this photo was taken.

Five strawberry plants have found a temporary home in one of the terra cotta pots. I'm hoping Mr. Fanatic will have some time soon to build a vertical container for them.

For those who don't remember the raised beds Mr. Fanatic built last year on the South side of the house... here they are.

Mr. Fanatic installed a drip irrigation system for these beds. He's also planning to install one in the North garden raised beds, as well.

 

There you have it...hope you enjoyed your tour of our expanded raised bed vegetable garden. This is where you'll find me most days when the weather is good. 

I just love to watch the plants grow!

If you would like to see how Mr. F. made the terraced raised beds last year, you can see the post HERE.

Are you planting any veggies this year?

Pam

joining: 

Savvy Southern Style for Wow Us Wednesday