CONTROLLING EROSION

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Contour trenches are simply ditches that you dig along a hillside in such a way that they follow a contour and run perpendicular to the flow of water. They catch water and allow it to sink into the ground before it can get a running start down the hill. Contour trenches are particularly valuable on hardened soil — like old logging roads — where water penetration is painfully slow.

To make contour trenches, first gather all your friends and issue them picks, mattocks, and shovels. When the moaning and groaning stop, begin digging several short trenches five or six inches deep and no more than about two or three feet apart. Keep this project short! Digging ditches on a hard-packed, heavily eroded slope is nobody's idea of great fun.

Brush wattles. Simple seeding, mulching, brush mats, and contour trenches will take care of 98% of your sheet erosion problems. For those rare times when you have an exquisitely nasty and persistent problem with sheet erosion, you can resort to brush wattles.

Begin by making a series of contour trenches at least eight inches deep, preferably deeper. As you remove the dirt, somehow, somewhere, get it out of the area. Next, lay some brush in the trenches. Stagger the brush along the trench so that it all interlocks, like strands within a rope. As you build up the brush, stomp it hard so that it packs into the trenches. If it keeps springing up, you can try cursing it or packing it down with some dirt. The last several pieces of brush that you lay in the trench should stick up above the level of the land. To help keep the brush in place, knock in stakes (preferably stakes capable of growing) just behind the trench on the downhill side. Space the stakes one foot, or at most two feet, apart. If you have lots of long, limber branches, you should weave them between the stakes to form a wattle fence.

What you're left with is admittedly a weird structure, and one that is hard to build — especially on a steep, unstable slope where you are most likely to need it. It has, in fact, only one redeeming feature: It works! The water running downhill sinks into the trenches. Silt suspended in the water also gets caught in the trenches and builds up within the protruding branches of the brush and behind the wattle fence. A wattled slope soon forms little terraces of relatively stable silty soil — excellent places for plants to get a start.

GULLIES

Patrick Henry (of "liberty or death" fame) once said, "Since the achievement of our independence, he is the greatest patriot who stops the most gullies." I used to think this statement a bit outlandish, but the more I've gotten to know about land, gullies, and patriotism; the more I've come to agree.

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