Terracing my backyard.......

[stillhunter]

My backyard is a heavily wooded, continuous slope that varies in steepness. There are a 3 tall, sickly 50"+ Poplars and 6 more about 24 to 40" I want to cut down. I was thinking about dropping and using long pieces of the trunks to terrace and fill in the slope and make a flatter top of the hill and yard close to the house. Seems I could have it step up by filling/leveling the ground inside an outer ring of logs and add another ring 8-10 ' or so inside stepping up again. It would eventually become a built up slope maybe 3 to 1 w settling and after the logs rot away? problem is my drain field would be covered w 1 to maybe 5' of fill. I wonder how much fill or if a certain kind of fill dirt should be used ...........any advice is welcome .

 

[derwoodii]

My backyard is a heavily wooded, continuous slope that varies in steepness. There are a 3 tall, sickly 50"+ Poplars and 6 more about 24 to 40" I want to cut down. I was thinking about dropping and using long pieces of the trunks to terrace and fill in the slope and make a flatter top of the hill and yard close to the house. Seems I could have it step up by filling/leveling the ground inside an outer ring of logs and add another ring 8-10 ' or so inside stepping up again. It would eventually become a built up slope maybe 3 to 1 w settling and after the logs rot away? problem is my drain field would be covered w 1 to maybe 5' of fill. I wonder how much fill or if a certain kind of fill dirt should be used ...........any advice is welcome .

unclear on fill medium or quantity, some pictures or map would help us. But im sure if you sox poplars without pre poisoning them their likely to sucker up shoots from stump & roots all over the place... its your fall-winter now so hard to chemical kill ATM its best in spring so may need to wait while pondering planing the landscape.

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

How deep is your septic drain right now? Here the tank and field is down a ways, granted we put water lines 10-12ft down so they won't freeze too.
Unless your setup can't handle the weight of more dirt on top, I don't see why it would matter.

I would use something better than poplar to hold your yard up. Think heavy rain 5 years later and half your yard landslides because of the rotted out wood.

 

[stillhunter]

I was planning on having the new, flatter slope going across the old one diagonally or almost perpendicular to slow the speed of the runoff, that and being able to plant and grow grass or other ground cover/erosion control after the trees are down and some sunlight can actually reach the ground. Currently very little sunshine hits most of the backyard and much of it is bare besides the damn, invasive stilt grass.

 

[Marine5068]

Poplars that are 50" in diameter? That's huge....never seen one that round before. I guess they can get that big though.

 

[BC WetCoast]

Poplars are notorious for having the logs suckering, so if you bury the logs, be prepared to have suckers coming up from the log.

 

[Guido Salvage]

Poplars that are 50" in diameter? That's huge....never seen one that round before. I guess they can get that big though.

My best friend owned an original land grant plantation in Virginia, he had a poplar that was 6+' across at the base.

 

[Heath475]

I can offer my two cents worth - try to focus on drainage behind the log retaining walls this will have two main benefits:
1. will reduce moisture being held against the logs which should assist in delaying rot
2. will reduce the pore water pressure/force on the log wall and hopefully make it last longer.

Not sure what you call it over there but we call it socked ag pipe (black plastic pipe with holes in it and a fabric sleeve). Usually very cheap to buy and if you place it along the back of the logs or if you place some screenings behind the log wall make sure you wrap with geofabric or the soil will find all of the voids and you will have depressions at the surface.

Also don't underestimate the importance of geofabric to stop you from losing soil between the logs and into any voids. Wrap it up and over the logs so that when you backfill you can fold back over and bury beneath the surface.

The guy that owned my house before we purchased it ignored all of the above, which is extremely frustrating as it is a lot of effort to redo but the logs are rotting, there are sink holes/depressions all along the top of the walls and the wall is starting to fail (logs are mixed hardwood and were placed approx 5 years ago). When I replace I will build a boulder rock wall instead with the sandstone I dig up from doing our house extension.

Hope this helps a little.

 

[Nish]

Dead tulip poplar decays rapidly in NC. Letting them sucker may extend their life and aid the erosion control. I wouldn't depend on heavy sucker growth though. I also wouldn't depend too much on those logs over the long term. Maybe you could use them to temporarily hold back a modest dam of smaller logs, organic debris, and topsoil until you can grow desirable shrubs and trees on top of it, the roots of which would take over soil retention duty as the poplar logs decay. It'd be a kind of hugelkultur terrace.

 

[Jim Timber]

I'm going to venture that a tree that large is going to be too old to be a vigorous suckerer.

Cutting it after leaf-out in the spring, and doing a 50/50 garlon diesel on the cambium after the cut should eliminate any problems. Just be warned, poplar being a colony tree, you might kill every other tree with connected roots. Without full sun, the suckers won't survive too long, so you could just cut the problem trees and see what happens. The suckers can be mowed easy enough to control them.