There are two main ways we start a garden bed. The easy way and the hard way.
The Easy Way:
Put down plain, non-dyed cardboard directly over your grass. Water the cardboard. Cover the cardboard with lots of compost. Wait. Then dig holes through the cardboard and any dead (mostly dead) grass roots and plant your plants. Mulch.
This has an ok success rate with Bermuda grass. Also known as the bane of my existence. That stuff has roots a mile long and never dies.
The Hard Way:
Buy some beer. Convince your friends to come pick axe out your grass by bribing them with the beer. Spend time axing away the grass. Then pick out the grass clumps and put them in a bucket or on a tarp. Carry the grass clumps to the compost pile. Pick out any left over weeds still in the bed. Then add compost. Plant. Mulch.
As with most things in life- the easy way works but not as well as the hard way.
These are a few photos of suckers we tricked into helping us make our first large bed in the back a few years ago. You can even see the herb garden in the middle of the next shot when it was just a twinkle in our eye.
Our dear friend Chris, using the hard way method, who moved to Panama to get away from our often and insane requests of him.
End/ Beginning Product.
Wow that looks really good and it only cost you some beer and a close (distance) friend. Not too bad. I really do like the garden.
ReplyDeleteHeather
I mostly smothered my lawn by putting about a foot of leaves on it for 6 month. Then slowly worked bed by bed turning the leaves and mostly dead grass under. It worked, but it was just me doing all the work.
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