CONTROLLING EROSION

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After seeding. If your land is relatively flat, you can seed and forget. But what if you're working on a steep slope where the soil is so unstable that you're afraid it will wash away, or where the land is so hard that you think the seeds might simply float down the hill? In such cases you'll have to devise some way of holding the seeds and earth in place — at least until the seeds germinate, the roots work their way into the soil, and the green stuff rises up like flags of victory to tell you everything is going well.

Willow stakes. In the following sections I describe several structures that will hold the soil together for a while. You can use any materials to build these structures, but if you use willow cuttings, you will reap an extraordinary advantage. Not only will they serve a mundane mechanical function as posts or stakes, but they will very likely sprout, send down roots, help bind the soil, and carry on an exuberant and useful existence of their own. Willows are especially valuable wherever you're dealing with moist land and bad drainage.

In addition to willows, there are other cuttings you can use for living stakes or posts. In our part of California, for example, elderberries and "mule fat" sprout easily from cuttings. Under hard conditions they may last for only one or two seasons — but while they last they'll do a lot of good.

Black locusts. The black locust is not an insect; it's a tree with a supergood reputation for erosion control. It establishes itself on poor, dry sites, has a spectacular rate of growth and a good root structure, and adds a lot of nitrogen to depleted soil. It is not unusual for a three-year-old locust to be 15 feet tall with a root system spreading 25 feet.

You can plant locusts as seedlings or from root cuttings. For erosion control, plant them close together — say, five feet by five feet, or even three feet by three feet in really bad places.

Permanent vegetation. Temporary vegetation is meant to give out, and even willows and locusts are not usually climax species. You should plan for what you hope the permanent vegetation will be. Talk it over with your land. Find out what was there before the land was misused. Decide whether the land can support its climax vegetation, or whether you should begin further down the line of succession. I can't advise you what to plant — it varies from one area to another, and in fact from one acre to the next — but by studying uneroded, undisturbed land in your neighborhood, you should be able to figure it out.

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