Anyone know how to get grass up thats not so painful? I'm turning a section of my lawn/yard into another garden. Catch is the grass there is thick. I need to do it soon as can be too. I don't wanna use chemicals. So, other than Shovel or Sodcutter, any ideas? I know if I just till it in, later I'll get lots of weeds/grass in garden to pull.
If you have time, put down black plastic sheeting. It will absorb heat and kill most of what is underneath. Large pieces of carpet work even better. The combination of heat and lack of light will wipe out an awful lot.
I concur that tilling it in is not that great of an idea. There are no short cuts I am familiar with. It can be cut out as sod and stacked upside down, and then added the same way in layers to a compost pile. The heat of a properly constructed pile will cook the seeds and grass and turn it all into good brown compost. Other than that, no ideas.
Use your Google-fu and check out Back To Eden gardening. The guy spreads newspapers on top of the soil/grass, covers with mulch, leaves it for a while, then when he's ready to plant, he digs down to the dirt, digs a little hole, drops in seed, covers seed with dirt and it grows. No muss, no fuss. Kajun
OOOh! Rent a harley rake. I have always wanted an excuse to use one of those. let me know how it does if you use one.
At first i was thinking Woody Harrellson or Cheech and Chong... but thats the wrong type of grass.....
Has anyone actually tried the lasagna planting or mulch/paper/cardboard over bermuda and had ANY success with it? Coz frankly I think that mess will push it's way up through concrete. We made 2 ft raised beds a few years back, following the lasagna method, and I put a pickup bed load worth of paper down on the bermuda. Come July I had the prettiest yellow squash and tomatoes being completely buried in stinking bermuda. I asked the writer of that book on her Facebook page if she'd ever tried it with bermuda and got no answer... got a number of other comments from people who had my same results though. Black plastic is the only non-chemical thing I've used on it with any success.
