New Easy Way to Remove Lawn Grass to Make a New Garden

Easy way to make a new garden using an improved mulching method.

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New Easy Way to Remove Lawn Grass to Make a New Garden
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[erikswartzendruber]

Love your videos. My experience: In western Oregon you have to smother grass for 2 YEARS before it dies. It will grow right through 6 or more inches of mulch.

[martyjewell]

I wasn't in a rush and I didn't want to do the work, so I got a few chickens. Problem solved and eggs were a nice bonus!

[richiej]

Cut out small squares of turf an plant your cover area around plants with cardboard with woodchip well for me

[barryfoster]

A black polythene sheet does the trick - takes about four weeks. It has the added benefit of stopping any rain, so the grass gets no water and no light. Just have to weigh it down with bricks. I'm a professional gardener in England, and I have another one to do next week - quite a large area where there were trees cut down, and grass and weeds have taken over. I will go back mid December and it will all be dead, so I can start a lawn.

[emptynestgardens]

For me who was in no hurry it worked fantastic. Zone5🇨🇦 Covered lawn with organic matter and newspapers and 4 inches of arborist chips last summer '22. Now June '23 I pulled back the woodchips that hadn't fully decomposed to make a border, filled-in divet with 3in1 and planted. Viola new bed rich in organic matter and loaded with worms to continue their job. Not bad at all, my native soil is sand. All the weeds and grass were 90% gone. 👍🏻🌱🌼

[insertphrasehere]

TL;DR: Dig out the sod, and 4 inches of 'clean' soil under it, put the sod at the bottom of the hole with cardboard, then mix compost into the clean soil and mulch. Job done.

I did mine in sections. Cut the sod off the top with a sharp shovel and set aside, dig down and pull up ~4in of soil and set aside, then put the sod back down (upside down), drop a layer of cardboard, then put all the loose soil from lower down on top of the cardboard. You can do this as a continuous process as you go, using the soil from section B to cover section A cardboard, etc. Then mix a bunch of compost/leafmulch/mulch into the soil and plant in it.
It's not that much work, and if your soil is organic poor (as mine is) it has the advantage of moving the sod and topsoil low where it can do the most good, but also the cardboard will stop it from growing.

When I plant isolated plants in the lawn (pumpkins and squashes mostly), I do something similar. Dig a big hole, pulling the sod out and flipping it over and opening it up to the sides (covering the grass next to the hole). Then I cut a square hole and drop a cardboard box into the hole (with tape removed). I fill the cardboard box with a 50/50 mix of compost and the soil from the hole (soil from under the sod). The cardboard box keeps the grass roots from going into the box (at least in the short term, and by then the squash has fully taken over the box's soil). Then I put a layer of mulch and plant my seedlings there. My butternuts and cucumbers took over the lawn, growing 5-6 meters in every direction.

[GettingThereGreenGTG]

My kids inflatable swimming pool did a good job killing grass in a matter of a couple weeks last summer.
Unfortunately it was lawn I didn't want to kill.

[hanzketchup]

You can flip the soil too, I did that in the middle of spring and its doing pretty good, the grass is coming in from the sides so around the bed I laid cardboard and covered it with wood mulch and it’s doing ok, but a different area I covered it with pine needles and Nothing is getting through that.

[nebsun]

Cut through the grass roots at the boundary where you want to kill it, cover with a few layers of cardboard, then put a layer of compost or mulch on top of that - you don't want the grass to be fed from the connections it has which may reach outside the boundary, cardboard decomposes slowly which is what you need since it does take a while for grass (and weeds) to completely die off, the compost on top can be planted in right away and will help to retain moisture - the cardboard undertneath should be kept wet to kill the grass faster.
In my case, even after a year or more there were still some weeds starting to punch their way through and I ended up using some checmical herbicide which finally eradicated them.

[billsnyder]

I am surprised you can comment on the cardboard method having never tried it. It works great and does not take that long to break down, and I am in zone 5b. A few inches of “any organic matter” will not smother and kill bluegrass or fescue. I have killed thousands of square feet of lawn using at least 8 inches or more wood chips and around the edges that meet grade and less than about 6-8 inches I use cardboard also. If I want quick results I will rototill grass and remove roots shaking out dirt. Charles Dowding does cardboard and 3” compost all the time, he is in a wetter slightly warmer climate. He plants right away, obviously it works and the cardboard is needed or he would skip that step.

[NotGoddess]

2-3 inches of mulch alone won't tackle a weedy area with dandelion, quackgrass, etc, but if you have time, use 8 inches (it'll settle to 3-6), and re-mulching 2+ inches if you see things working through can work. But as you said - take time, and you have to always watch for emergence.

[sonnyamoran]

Wow, in 9b, my cardboard is gone in less than 5 weeks. I wet the area, lay cardboard, and wet it. Make my beds on top and plant on top. I cover my paths in cardboard, wet it, and mulch on top. I'm so sorry it takes so long where you are. I enjoy all your videos. Thanks

[Mindy-s-channel]

That is also what I have ended up doing. I just wait for a nice hard rain to loosen it up a bit. Makes it much easier for me because I have hard clay soil. I use a root slayer shovel which also makes it easier

[johnharvey]

I had a grassy area that I wanted to re-naturalize, so I covered it in cardboard that I got from a local plumbing business, and removed it after a few months. The area sprang back with various wildflowers, small trees, blackberries, horse nettle, etc. Compared to the rest of my yard (all unmowed) it looks like a jungle.

[JamesFulkerson-qn]

Yes I am also trying that also for next spring cardboard and grass and straw a few bags of compost

[alien_mysteries]

Wish my neighbors would use more organic methods. All my bees disappeared.

[tuloko]

Fire followed by thick mulching has always worked well for me. I hit the area with the string trimmer first, down as low as i can. Then burn the area wth a torch. Then keep it wet for a few days. When the mushrooms start to appear, i add the organic material.

[astrosoup]

Light gets through the mulch, even newspaper. It requires a lot.

[MsRosaJo]

I don't know how many times, as a new homeowner and gardener, I inadvertently killed grass by leaving piles of yard debris sitting on the lawn for too long.

[dianekistner]

Oh, but the earthworms LOVE cardboard! And it’s a way to get rid of all our Amazon boxes…