How to Mulch a Steep Hillside

Greetings after a long, long absence. I have been in Maine with my family for the past few weeks, spending most of my time with friends and relatives, celebrating birthdays and everydays. Soon I go back to the city, and for the first time I almost stricken with a sinking feeling: as if it is not the right place for me and I should stay here. I know I want to be here, but I also know this is not the perfect time....perfection will come when I get a teaching job here and am able to live confidently and in a way that makes me happy....


Obviously, this trip has been about soul-searching, and I do my best soul-searching when I am metalsmithing or when I am gardening. During this vacation, I spent my time gardening. 


When I started this project, I could find mixed bags of information on how to mulch and solarize a steep hill, so I combined advice from fellow gardeners, information from internet forums, and my own ideas and I think made something that will work amazingly well. Just in case you ever need to do this: here are the instructions. 


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The situation: a large hill about 50 feet by 20 feet that lay at a 45 degree grade on my parents' property. The grade is so steep that it is near impossible to mow, and has to be weed-eated. It is a giant pain in the butt, and is on the edge of the leech field so it can only be planted with non-edibles.

The goal: kill all the grass and plant the area with creeping juniper and other recumbent and creeping plants so that the area never needs to be mowed again!


Here is the only before shot that I could find, since I forgot to take one!

Note the steep-ness....the area is to the right in this photo

Procedure (I am a science teacher after all)

1. Purchase high-quality DuPont landscaping fabric in 100' rolls. Figure out how much you will need by measuring the distance from top to bottom. The fabric is 3' wide, but you need to overlap about 6-8", and fold the fabric at the top (and bottom if you are particular like me). Get more than you need. I bought 6 and ended up using 5. 

2. Purchase long sod stakes.....the really long ones are good. Purchase a box of 500 and then be prepared to use more. In the end, I used about 675!!!

3. Find a metal mallet or other strong metal tool to knock the staples in, and get a pair of scissors.

4. Starting at one side (move left to right or right to left depending on preference), fold the landscaping fabric along the top in a nice, straight fold. Use three sod staples, one at either edge and one in the middle, and anchor the fabric at the top of the hill. 

5. Start rolling the fabric down the hill, and staple every 6-12 inches on both sides. The fabric will begin to look quilted.

6. At the bottom, cut the landscaping fabric to length and fold again. The folding is going to help with water run-off and it looks nice! Once you have folded, use three sod staples and pound them in (side, middle, side) just like you did at the top.

7. Climb back up the hill. (your legs become much stronger after this project!)

8. For the second piece of fabric: overlap about 6-8 inches over the piece you just stapled down. 

9. Shower, rinse, repeat....in other words, did what you did for the first piece making sure the second continues to overlap all the way down. I found it challenging at the beginning to keep it relatively straight, so sometimes I had to fold it and bend it a little bit. 

10. Keep going until your hillside is covered! 

Quilted!!! 

11. Take care to wrap around tree trunks so that no grass can escape!

Make a tight collar to eliminate weeds growing around the tree trunk and wrecking your efforts!

When you collar the trees, you may have to "patch" the area to make the fabric fit.

Here you can see some of the folding that happens....pull the fabric as tight as you can and you will minimize this...

12. Landscaping fabric is guaranteed for 15 years if it is covered with mulch. For this project, the most cost effective mulch was mulch hay. So go to your local feedstore and buy STRAW, not hay (hay has weed seeds and you will be sad later). I bought 5 bales but probably should have bought 6. You want it to be thick on top of the fabric.

13. Using your skills of balance, honed after many years of walking, you need to take large armfuls of straw and walk down your fabric-covered hillside and start dumping it all over the fabric, taking care to cover it fully and thickly. Having a friend to help you with this step makes it more fun!

In process....this is the stage where you will fall and slide alot.

Almost finished!

14. Once all the straw is put down and you are satisfied with its thickness, you need to install something to hold the straw in place. Otherwise, you are going to wake up on some cold, rainy morning with a giant pile of soppy, rotting straw at the bottom of your hill. 

15. The solution (I think) is bird or deer netting. I suggest deer netting because it is the same thing as bird netting, comes in larger packages, and is cheaper. Buy enough to cover the whole surface but remember you don't have to overlap. I bought 2 packages of 7' by 100' and had a little bit extra.

16. (You need more sod stakes for this step). One friend holds the roll at the top of the hill (working from side to side again) and stakes the netting in place, stretching as wide and tight as possible. Once it is staked at the top, throw it down to the friend at the bottom of the hill. Pull, stretch tight and stake in at the bottom. 

17. Repeat all the way across, making sure that you also stake along the sides when you are finished. It is helpful also to throw some rocks around to hold it down in the middle where you can't reach. 

18. Last step!!! Find some heavy logs somewhere and set them up next to each other along the top of the hill. Use 12" landscaping spikes on the downward-facing edge to stop them from rolling down and ruining your neighbor's yard and/or car. According to my research, this helps with run-off because the snow/water will run over the logs versus under your straw....who knows if this will work. This remains to be seen come winter when there is a ton of snow and ice and bad weather and mud. We shall see.....

See the deer netting?

Finished!!!

Et finis!!!

The next stage is to let the fabric and straw mixture to sit till the spring. Hopefully, the grass will be killed and we will be able to cut into the fabric and plant new plants. This is the hope....and we all know that hope springs eternal when it comes to gardening.

I hope this is useful to someone!!! This project was very difficult and labor-intensive, but in the end, I am proud of myself and I think it is going to work. Also, gardening helped me to calm down and realize that everything is well, that all will be fine, and that I am excited for a new year of school.