Raised Beds on sloping ground

I'm new to the group, and don't know if this has been discussed before, but what is the best advice for making raised beds on sloping land. I live in western CT and there is almost no flat land around here.

Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Joy Williams on February 14, 2009 at 2:37pm: Check this out, Paul: http://www.kitchengardeners.org/ Front page is about raised beds.

This might be helpful too: http://www.cultivatensw.org.au/uploadedfiles/HT_Fact_Sheets__2_RAIS...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Paula on February 18, 2009 at 4:39pm: Hi Paul. I have read that it's best to keep the bed level. If it's on the side of a hill, the book I read talked about digging into the hill in order to give yourself a level area. I'm sure at some angle this becomes preventative. (I believe the book was "Square Foot Gardening".) My garden is sloped and I put up a bed last year without levelling the ground. After any kind of a rain storm the water would run to the corner (obviously enough!). This year I'm going to put in two more beds and move the one already there and I plan on levelling them all out.

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Permalink Reply by Rod Jendrysik on September 4, 2009 at 9:24pm: Hi Paul,

I'm new and just exploring the areas of KGI. So, I guess I'm a season late on the feedback here. It is best to keep it level for the reason that Paula mentioned. Eventually your soil will tend to move to the lowest points and eventually spill over. I've built several raised beds for friends and relatives with sloping ground. The approach that I take depends on the material that you have to build with (rocks, blocks, brick, timbers, logs, etc), degree of slope, landscape asthetics and depth of existing topsoil. For a friends sloping front yard in SW Wisc. I used timbers and dug the sides into the slope (3 sided) since the soil was deep. If you have bedrock close to the surface you can anchor the base layer into the rock and build up. In this case you can stagger and layer your timbers and build up. In this case I planted shallow rooting flowers and herbs up the slope and deeper rooted plants in the deeper section. The big thing here is to make sure that your base is anchored well so that it does not slide down the grade. With a little creativity anything is possible. Hope this helps and if you want we can bounce some ideas off of each other to find what works for you.

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