Planting a windbreak on a slope

And yes, I blame the wild boar.

They have escaped the annual winter hunting peril (the season closed last week) and are now free to range about the mountain without fear of being shot.

And that means there are lovely areas to roam without restraint.

I can’t say I look out the kitchen window with dread to see if they have churned up more of my garden… but I do.

And it means I am walking about the lower terraces with more regularity than usual.

Some months I never venture here at all.

We like to leave the wildlife to eat the mulberries and generally frolic without humans ruining their lives. There are deer tracks all through the acres of terraces down here.

But with more plodding to sort the tree and the mulching I couldn’t put off the horrors of this bank any longer.

It needed sorting.

WARNING THIS POST IS RELENTLESSLY BROWN. And full of dirt. I’ll keep it brief.

I planted the almond trees (and transplanted a few apple trees) to start building up a small windbreak for a few terraces above.

The harsh southern winds have proved more violent these past few years and that means the orchard gets a battering. Not to mention the trees closer to the house. So anything to slow the wind helps.

The plan is to have a small shrubbery of fruit trees in this small (ten metres by three metres) section of slope. And I’m happy with the start I made. The almonds are well anchored and even producing nuts.

The brambles and rampant grasses in between the small trees however could no longer be ignored.

Well, I can. But I didn’t.

So once the frost had relented a bit each morning I have been going at the slope with a fork and a trowel and dug everything out.

There are rocks galore here and of course the bramble roots do like to hide underneath.

So there has been perching and digging and then re-positioning the rocks all at the same time.

Because of course with slope gardening you have to always remember you are one huge rainstorm away from erosion and disaster.

So the rocks stay. And I added more.

And planted three more apricot trees to anchor the slope.

You could say the bramble roots were anchoring the slope. But I much prefer fruit.

And what to do with all the yanked out weeds and roots?

I placed a strip of weed proof fabric on the top of the slope and piled all the detritus into a long snaking heap.

I don’t want anything to re-root in this rather rich soil.

And then covered the lot up with an unsightly tarp.

Which does detract from the aesthetics of the site. (My, you are receiving your dose of brown and dull this month.)

Add in more horizontal logs and rocks. And then cover the lot with my just-chipped piles of sticks.

I ran out of chippings. All my sticks seem to be going to the kindling for the fire pile rather than ground cover in the garden. So I finished off with extra bags of oak leaves from the previous day of endless raking.

And to finish? I went down to the vineyard and unearthed the huge roll of fencing that was abandoned from decades of earlier intent. Not by me, I hasten to add.

It was too heavy to drag up the mountain so we took the pickup down and pushed it off the edge and caught it before it made a roll for freedom.

The whole area is now nicely fenced (you can barely see the wires) so the wild boar and badgers won’t run amok in here. They can play elsewhere for now. The resident hedgehogs can get in. The gaps in the wires are very small wildlife friendly.

And I’ll keep adding woodchips and rocks to anchor the site when I have time.

Time?

The grasses!

Next job on the list. Or is it the iris project?