New here. Ideas for what to plant on steep banks?

either put goat there with electric or run wire....
or cut twice a year and rake with pitch fork for hay....

Plant native wild flowers. Win win there partner.

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Sage, thyme, creeping rosemary, other herbs to your taste, a couple of bay trees. Celosia (pretty, but also edible), nasturtiums, violets, peonies, pansies (all edible), grain sorghum, sunflowers. As someone suggested,vining cucurbits - melons, pumpkins, cucumber, gourds - plant them at the top, and keep throwing the vines down as they climb out onto level ground. Plant the bush varietes at the base of the slopes. Poke your favourite kitchen bean seeds into holes, see what comes up, and enjoy what you can reach as garden-fresh green beans. Poke in a few Cos (I think, in your case, Romaine) lettuce seeds, and some kale seeds (planting them in this case because the seeds are small enough for ants to carry off). Poke garlic cloves in holes. As they grow thicker and thicker, you won't get worthwhile bulb garlic, but you'll have the low-growing leaves as marvellous concentrated-garlic-taste "garlic chives". If tomatoes go off, squash them and scatter the debris across the slopes. Do this with this year's melon, squash and pumpkin seeds as well. Poke a few sweet potatoes into the banks - you may not get many tubers, but there will be some hiding under all the other leaves, and you can also eat a lot of the sweet potato greens (or purples) in salads or lightly steamed. Sweet potatoes are DIFFERENT to Irish potatoes, whose foliage is deadly poison. A lot of it will be "wasted", but whatever you get will be a bonus, and the rest will grow again next year.

Some of those slopes just beg for grapevines on trellises, on 6" mini-terraces, with thyme, marjoram, oregano and mint groundcover.

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone.

I love the idea, functionality, and look of terracing these slopes for food production, but good lord…how am I really gonna do that short of an excavator? I suppose I could get out there with a shovel & pulaski and work from the bottom up over the course of 1 or 2 seasons and maybe get somewhere on 1 of the slopes. No budget for heavy equip work to be done. Any thoughts here?

As for all the folks suggesting planting this or planting that (without terracing) thank you! I have no realistic way of tilling the soil, though. It doesn't look like it in the shots but 2 of the 3 slopes (in front of house and the longer slope near gravel drive) are mostly at a 35-40* angle and aren't even really walkable at this point.

How do I effectively remove the current grasses and properly plant? Some of this is new to me, so sorry for newb questions.

Goats have always been a thought, but would really only work on 1 of the slopes and, in my opinion, that slope would need to be fenced a bit more permanently and connected to a much larger fenced in area, which is a bit of a challenge bc most of our property is on side of a mountain and laborious and slow to fence by hand. I've done a good bit of fencing so far with setting wooden posts, stretching woven wire and banging' T posts (mostly all of it on pretty sloped parts) and trust me, that takes a WHILE to do properly by myself. Also pretty expensive in the long run, but obviously worth it.

Long-term goal is to fence the boundary of the 2+ acres of our hillside (behind house) in 4 ft woven wire and run goats through there, wherever the hogs aren't. That will help with the overgrown brush, saplings, etc always sprouting up so hard in spring and summer, but that fence is gonna take some serious time to install.

I really like the mint idea on the front slope (in front of house) but how to plant with so much grass already there. Really thinking about the mint on 1 slope, blueberries on the slightly gentler slope (with evergreen type bushes near top) and eventually connecting last long slope to larger goat fenced area. Keep the suggestions coming.

Also, I know I mentioned our hardiness climate zone in 1st post, but I feel like some of these suggestions make not work that well here in this climate, but thanks to all for replying! Our growing season is "officially" from May 15th-Sept 15 due to late snow/freezes/frosts in spring and early, unpredictable weather in fall.

the banks that are NOT near the road would make good spots for fruit trees, vines or brambles for food production, might want to plant it into food forests..see how much mulch you can gather and place some fruit or nut trees a proper distance apart for the spread as an adult and then pile gobs of mulch around them, careful not to put too much mulch at the trunks, if there are rabbits or deer put some chicken wire around the trunks to protect them while they are small..

then plant some dynamic accumulators around them like comfrey, rhubarb, horseradish, or whatever, some nitrogen fixers like lupines, clover, peas, etc..and some insectaries, you can probably use some of your weeds here as some will be wildflowers that attract bees..slash a lot of the weeds for mulch as well..if the mulch is thick enough you shouldn't have to water the trees after the first year..and then only in dry periods..water well before first mulch is applied and wet the mulch well.

as for out by the road go for some perennial ground covers and plants, if you were here i'd give you divisions of daylilillies..

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You could remove all of the grasses and weeds in a year if you do this:

Get straw and spread it out all over the slopes. Then tarp it down. Everything underneath will die and the straw will compost so you'll have great soil.

Done. Easy.

Ideally, what time of year would you start that process? Spring-following spring?

Thanks for idea! It'd have to be some pretty hoss tarps to cover some of this and that'd be tough to keep em down in the middle of winter when the wind is a howlin'.

Well put blocks on the top of the tarps on top of the hill and then tie milk jugs filed with water to the bottom of the tarps. That should hold it down fairly well.

If you're going to try straw-and-cover, you can make your cover out of flattened cardboard. Get whatever cardboard or cardboard boxes you can from the local supermarkets, flatten them, spread them over the straw, then pin them down with 9" staples made from wire - even coathangers if you've got excess. If 9" is too long, just hammer them over, and the excess will be extra flat surface holding the cardboard down. When that's done, wet the cardboard down and flatten it some more, particularly the edges, so it's less likely to blow loose.

If you can come by it, old carpet is the absolute best for this, even alternating with and holding down the edges of the cardboard.

Terraces is a good idea. Berry bushes is another good thing for banks. We do both.

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We have a steep slope with very rocky soil....we have Japanese Wineberries there - they are very hardy and the berries are delicious!

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Great suggestions for the fruit trees, as long as there is some terracing done, to insure proper watering... As for comfrey, horseradish, and clover? Bocking14 or other Comfrey Cultivar (not any seed producing type). I'd nix the horseradish and clover, as they both spread.

I couldn't add much for recommendations, except to recommend you check out Sepp Holzer's Permaculture:

http://www.richsoil.com/sepp-holzer/...rmaculture.jsp

There is a lot of information on Paul Wheaton's site, about Sepp Holzer, and also videos to watch. He gardens on terraces...

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