Straw works well. Buy as bales or free sweepings from your local feed store, my favorite source of vegetable garden mulch. This fall after Halloween you might be able to gather up some for next year. Usually free for the hauling then. When set out in weather until used in late spring or early summer the clumps that come off are perfect for holding up the soil in raised mounds. I do that on one bed in particular with the most slope.

The trick is to have enough material to fill the gap & make the garden level again. Even works on a slight slope for me. If short of material I've used chopped shrub prunings, weed clippings, used coffee grounds, etc. as the fill and top with at least 4" of straw for a neater appearance. Then what is is decomposed enough by the next spring can be raked up onto the beds & replaced with new straw.

Dried grass clippings along the sides of the rows. When dried on a tarp they become light & loose. It's easy to spread with fingers like sprinkles on cupcakes. I just spread them again around kale seedlings in time for another heat wave this week.

Hope that helps,
Corrine

I can try this, but I am afraid it will cost a lot. I have a fairly large garden.

I seem to be the only one I talk to that has this problem. Most friends say they just make a row, throw seeds down, and come back in a few weeks to harvest.

I on the other hand have to reconstruct the entire garden after every rain, or I will lose plants. I have had it wash out so bad that plants washed into other rows. And the kicker is the dirt gets packed so hard from the rain. Someone said that maybe the dirt is to soft from tilling, but I have to disagree. A friends garden is soft as cotton and has very little erosion problem.

I can try the hay. At this point I do not know what else to do. I am afraid to plant the fall stuff. This has taken the joy out of gardening.

Thanks, Victor.

Soil that is deep with organic matter and coarse/medium sand will absorb water like a sponge. I don't know your location or rain events. Water just has to have an outlet whether into the soil or washing to lower ground or else just ponding up.

Are you on the side of a hill? If water is coming from one direction, I'd cut a channel around the garden to divert it. You might even want to put PVC drain pipes in along the side that gets the water.

We are on flat ground. It may have a very slight slope, but it is very slight. Our soil has lots of sand on the surface, and clay about 2 inches down. We have amended the garden soil with countless bags of peat moss, miracle grow garden soil, and top soil. It looks much better than the surrounding soil but the water characteristics have not changed.

I use leaf mulch or black plastic. The leaves are collected in the fall at curbside in heavily wooded neighborhoods. They are kept in bags until used as mulch. This seems to slow the erosion.

Having a the clay layer only 2 inches down might be the main problem. Because as Wayne noted the water has to go somewhere. With only 2 inches to the clay layer, the water would not be able to soak into your soil. It therefore flushes the upper layer into your row valleys instead. As you continue to work the garden soil, you should find (in years to come) your upper layer of good garden soil increasing and your clay layer moving deeper.

What I have done to soil amendments like peat moss and sand, is to use a potato fork to loosen and get the amendments down deeper...with forking and tilling, to 12 inches deep. The water goes in like a sponge and the ground can be worked very soon after a rain. I add things like compost and aged manure on the top and work these in about 5 inches.

yep mulch over and around them, if the water tracks down hill and does that then use a type of swale can be lines of bales of hay end to end.

Here is a link that might be useful: lens straw bale garden