I have a situation and am hoping the hive can give me some ideas on how to address it.
The front porch of our house is elevated a bit and right now the resulting slope gradually increases and diminishes as it goes around the front and south sides.
I would like to put in some sort of retaining wall system and create a terraced area that I can use to grow stuff. The original idea was to just put in a cinderblock retaining wall and have stairs come down from the porch deck to the retained dirt, create a platform across that and another set of stairs down to grade. Now I'm thinking of creating a terraced set of planters that also double as the stairs down.
Here is the front of the house. (yes, the porch is finished now)
The dirt will come up another 12 inches at the columns and the top layer will be about 6 feet from the columns to the edge and the next step down.
https://permies.com/t/254667/a/238898/Beams-2.jpg
The view from around the south side of the house.
The highest point of retained dirt is probaly about 5 feet.
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So there are a couple of questions.
Anyone have any ideas on how to build this terrace? Anyone have a similar situation that they built something for?
I have loads of leftover cinder block from the foundations, lots of available round
wood that I can harvest, or I can use something like this system:
https://dirtlocker.com/
I'm not really into using plastics, but at least they use recycled plastic, and it would likely last forever. If I could fashion something similar from natural materials, I would do it.
The next question is what can I plant in this that deer, squirrels, and other residents of the woodlands won't bother? I think garlic, onions, and artichokes are a good bet, but what else? This is going to be a lot of area to plant.
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