Three ways to turn your lawn into garden!
Over the years my lawn shrinks and my gardens expand… veggies, flowers, fruit trees, berries. Every year I adjust, move and hone my current gardens and slowly get rid of the lawn.
If you’re also looking to add more food or flower production to your yard read on to find a few ways I’ve dealt with getting rid of that pesky grass.
The Smother Method: Sheet Mulching/Lasagna Gardening
This is a nice way to passively smother the grass. In its basic form, sheet mulching can just be a 1/2 inch layer of cardboard or newspaper on top of your lawn to smother the underlying grass.
From here you can go a couple directions: 1) amend with the proper layers for a lasagna garden or 2) top with soil and plant directly into that.
If I’m making raised beds, I’ll build my boxes right over the sheet mulch. This will ensure that no grass grows up into the boxes.
First of all stock up on cardboard (bike shops are a great place to grab lots of cardboard as all new bikes come in a huge box) or newspaper and lie that over the area you’d like to garden. It’s a good idea to do two layers of cardboard and closer to 6-8 layer of newspaper just to be safe (invasive grass can be extremely tough!).
Once the cardboard is down, water it thoroughly, then layer from bottom to top in this order:
1) organic fertilizers per your soil test - if you absolutely don’t want to mess with a soil test you can add an all purpose one - just follow the directions on the box.
2) manure or compost
3) straw or dried leaves
4) grass clippings
5) compost or manure
6) more leaves or straw.
Water again and let this set for 2-3 months. Or if you can, let it set and decompose all summer. And you’ll have a killer garden next spring!
If you want to plant directly, add a few inches of garden soil on top of the last straw/leaf layer and plant away.
Pros: high nutrient value, relatively simple, can use free or low-cost materials
Cons: May not always kill invasive grass beneath, need lots of material, takes time
These garden boxes were made by first laying down material to smother the grass underneath.
Solarization
This is a low-labor and passive method for getting rid of lawn. You can also use this in an established garden bed if you’re having excessive weed problems. The sun shines through the plastic, heating up the underlying plant material enough to kill it.
First thing after the snow melts, cut your grass short where you are planning to build your garden and water thoroughly. If the grass is already cut short from the previous fall, don’t worry about this step.
Buy or scavenge a piece of clear plastic. The bigger the better. If pieces are too small, it’s harder to weigh therm all down and you might lose some in a wind storm.
Cover the entire garden-to-be area in plastic and weigh down with rocks, lumber, fire wood, or anything else. This is probably the most important step, as you don’t want wind to pick these up and move them around. This will lead to frustration and lots of tedious work on your end!
The plastic does need to be clear for true solarization - the sun shining through the plastic will heat up the underlying grass - killing it! You can do an alternative version with solid plastic which works more like the smother method. Using solid plastic won’t heat up the soil as much, making it take more time.
Now wait for 4 weeks and check! Be patient. Once the underlying grass is dead (it will turn green to yellow to brown) you are ready to garden.
Give the area a shallow till (not too deep as you may mix up deep weed seeds) or just plant right into the dead matter. I don’t advocate for regular tilling BUT it is useful to establish your new garden beds and to mix in soil amendments for the first year.
Pros: low labor, low cost.
Cons: takes time
Sod Removal
This is a labor intensive method but will give you a usable garden space quickly as you don’t have to wait for the grass to die off like you do in the afore mentioned methods.
You can either rent a sod cutter from the hardware store or manually cut and dig the sod. Once sod is removed, amend the soil as needed (with compost and fertilizers) and plant directly. For the first season of planting, double dig, rototill or broadfork (this you can do every year without any soil damage) to loosen and airate the soil.
Then plant away!
All these above methods can be used to create in-ground beds OR you can build up to make raised beds.
In-ground beds are simple and inexpensive.
Raised beds will heat up quicker in the spring and provide better drainage but you’ll have the additional expense of: lumber, and additional soil to fill.
Pros: relatively quick process
Cons: high labor