When we first removed the riverbed rocks from the slope, we covered a good portion of it with lawn for easy maintenance. Since we don’t have any exposed soil, any extension to the vegetable garden has to be terraformed.
We’re not fortunate enough to practice no-dig-gardening. To be able to grow vegetables on the slope, we need to build stair-like raised beds.
1. Remove the turf
Grab a shovel and carve out one brick-sized lump of turf at a time. The compact clay underneath doesn’t make the job easy. And placing both your feed on the spade for a vertical cut of the turf while keeping your balance on the steep surface is a true balancing act.
The easiest way to cut up the turf is to dig straight down with a sharp shovel in long parallel lines. Then you double back and cut up the long strip of turf in 20cm-long segments. When you are done with a strip and have tossed the lumps out of the way to the bottom of the slope in our case). Then you do the next strip, and the next, until you have cleared the entire area for the new beds.
To reduce the amount of soil we need to bring in when the beds are ready, we stack the turf bricks and save them for later.
2. Assemble beds and dig into the clay
After exposing the packed clay, it is time to measure out the position of each bed before literally chopping away clay to anchor the beds. Do yourself a favor and use a lever and take your time: you want your vegetable beds to be as level as possible – to be esthetically pleasing, but more importantly so that rain and irrigation don’t wash your soil and seeds down the slope.
3. fill the beds with soil and compost
At the bottom front of each bed, we placed layers of the dug-up turf upside-down and standard garden soil. No point in shelling out money for premium soil that will sit 60-80 cm below the surface. The turf will decompose and add organic matter. And I’m not worried about weeds sprouting at this depth.
As we get closer to the top of the beds, we mix cow manure compost into the garden soil. If I have it on hand, I will also add bokashi and leaf mold. For the final surface layer, we use pre-fertilized vegetable soil since we will be direct-sowing most of the root crop.
