http://www.groworganic.com/org...

I'd like to see that spiral in a year or two and see how it holds up. It seems like the soil will slip between the cracks too easily, and it's much too steep (thus the water will have trouble penetrating and will run off too quickly.)

It does seem like a pile of dirt with a few rocks in it.

It's pretty though and would perhaps be a good place for a soaker hose to keep it from collapsing when watered. I suppose it depends on the weather where it is, some of us would get strong enough rain to empty it out.

It does look like something you or Trish spoke of in a podcast: someone piled something together, took a picture, and posted it online as "here's an idea".

As distinct from trying it out for a season or two, to see how it worked, then improve it, THEN publish it as a GOOD idea.

The strange, criss-crossed irrigation mainlines suggest a lack of thought and planning at best. (I couldn't see any 1/4" or 1/8" takeoff lines at all.) Maybe they have several very fine low-flow sprayers or misters plugged right into the looped mainline, intended to water it so gradually that runoff and mudslides would be minimized. Until they got a heavy rain, as Jonna said.

It would be almost as pretty, but more functional, if they had used the same number of stones to make it wider and lower.

I forget, Dave, does your spiral just have a shallower slope, or is the soil level "stepped" or terraced as it goes around the spiral?

There's no stepping on the way down. Our spiral has a very, very shallow slope all the way down. There is never any movement of the soil.

I think that's smart.

My only wide bed on a slope currently has a 2-3 inch step in the middle, supported by a board. But that's so annoying to weed around that I'm planning to either make the "uphill" side less deep, or build up the "downhill" wall and create more soil to make that deeper (higher).

I like that plan.

I'm not sure why it's so hard to hoe weeds right up against the wall of a bed, a board, or a rock.

I would have thought that the edge or corner of the hoe would use the obstacle as a cutting board, and slice the root even easier than chopping it out of the soil.

But no. I have to switch to a knife, or lean the paving stone away and then pull.

I understand it being harder to PULL a weed that has a big solid object to cling to.