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Landscaping to prevent soil erosion in your yard – Show Notes
Today’s episode covers causes, solutions, and prevention of erosion in your yard. Erosion can cause cosmetic or serious damage to your landscape if not managed properly. Here’s how to manage soil erosion properly.
Today’s links: ely.how/episode79
- Erosion control plants
- Easy plants for low maintenance landscaping
- How to create a rain garden to prevent erosion – ELY 077
- Yard drainage solutions – ELY 051
- Ask a question
- Find me on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest
How to fix soil erosion problems in your yard
What is erosion?
- Water runoff problems
- Loss of topsoil
- Gullies, washouts, mudslides, landslides, rills
Causes of erosion
- Channeling of water
- Lack of adequate root systems
- Lack of topsoil
- Low organic matter
- Low fungal life
- Compaction
- Fast moving water conditions
How to fix soil erosion problems
- Do the opposite of causes of erosion!
- Erosion control plants
- Anchor soil
- Fibrous root structures
- Grasses, sedges
- Reduce channeled water causing erosion
- Slow down water flow
- Spread out water flow
- Infiltrate water
- “Slow it, spread it, sink it”
- Channeled water causing erosion
- Break up fast moving water
- Install ‘steps’ for water
- Create a series of pools along the channel to hold and slow water
- Runoff causing erosion
- Disperse water
- Slow it down
- Use infrastructure or earthworks
- Multi-functional
- Benches
- Garden beds
- Strategic landforms and hardscapes to prevent erosion
- Build on contour, perpendicular to runoff direction
- Rain gardens
- Capture water
- Prevent erosion
I like that you said that low organic matter can be a cause of erosion. My wife is wanting to hire a landscaping service that can help us prevent erosion since it ruined some of our plants last year. We’ll have to find a company that has had some experience with controlling erosion around plants.
Yes low organic matter can lead to reduced plant vigor – leading to higher erosion. Depending on the space, have you considered groundcovers around your plants with good fibrous roots to anchor soil?