Hello all. This is my first post after a year of lurking on here! I am working on deciding how to set up my first in ground garden on the property I bought about a year ago. Last year I did some raised beds but this year I want to prepare some land for sowing in ground next year, going for a no till strategy.
I have a picture of the first space that I want to plant. In the future I was hoping to use this space for a high tunnel or a green house so I would like to plan as if I was going to install one. I have two problems, first the space is fairly small, about 20 ft by 100 ft (excluding the existing french drain structure). Secondly, its not flat, I'd bet there's about a 2.5 ft grade there. I was planning on flattening out this plot by adding soil and putting in a retaining wall at the edge of the driveway (not pictured). Is it worth the effort to do that here or should I make different plans? I'm fairly new to this so any advice would be appreciated! Please see the attached picture of the area!
A non level high tunnel will make the construction workers shudder, but will work just fine. In fact, longitudinal slope is handy for drainage of the greenhouse.
If you add dirt to level it, make sure not to cover all your topsoil with subsoil if you plan on growing in the ground. Are you planning on heating the greenhouse? Depending on where youre located, a heated greenhouse is more or less cost effective.
20x 100 is a monster greenhouse for a non commercial setup.
The slope won't hurt your garden so i wouldn't worry about fixing it until your ready to build
You can use the slope to get some easy raised bed effect. Laying down logs parallel to the slope and filling behind them with topsoil can give nice deep soil on the upper side that is easy to reach from just below the log. It also avoids wasting new topsoil on the strip where you will be walking.
When I did this on a steep slope, I put in two or three logs with locust stakes to hold them, and turned up a strip of existing topsoil into the lowest part next to the logs, leaving a foot or so undisturbed to the next bed up for a walkway. This made for a uniformly deep planting area to fill with new topsoil. (My neighbor has horses on a small lot, and has for 30 or 40 years dumped their manure onto the edge of one of my fields, so I have a room's volume of composted horse manure to use for gardens.)
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