Pacific Northwest Garden Forum: Suggestions for getting rid of mature lawn?

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   I have this wonderful 15x15 area that has no trafic and great sunlight in my back yard and I would like to set up some rows for a vegetable garden for next spring. It has some very mature grass growing on it now. I was wondering if there is a great organic way to kill off the grass and keep all the nutrients. I was contemplating covering the area with cardboard or plastic. Would this work? 

Edited by Roxy3143 - Aug-31-2009 at 7:50am

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Roxy3143 Rainy Side New Joined: Aug-31-2009 Location: Oregon, Western Posts: 2	Topic: Suggestions for getting rid of mature lawn? Posted: Aug-31-2009 at 7:47am
	I have this wonderful 15x15 area that has no trafic and great sunlight in my back yard and I would like to set up some rows for a vegetable garden for next spring. It has some very mature grass growing on it now. I was wondering if there is a great organic way to kill off the grass and keep all the nutrients. I was contemplating covering the area with cardboard or plastic. Would this work? Edited by Roxy3143 - Aug-31-2009 at 7:50am

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JeanneK Mod Joined: Jul-28-2003 Location: Oregon, Greater Portland Metro Posts: 2103	Posted: Aug-31-2009 at 10:01am
	Hi Roxy, Yes, use cardboard, then add 3-4 inches of compost or bark dust. Compost is better. Make sure you water it until the rains start. You will probably have to weed it a bit this fall. Let the winter rains and the soil biota and worms decompose the cardboard down into a nice, rich soil for you. If you use plastic, you will bake the soil biota and kill them. This is the way you sterilize the soil if there is disease but you kill everything, including the grass and then you have to dig up the dead grass anyway. Make it easy on yourself and your garden. Use the cardboard.
	Jeanne
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Roxy3143 Rainy Side New Joined: Aug-31-2009 Location: Oregon, Western Posts: 2	Posted: Aug-31-2009 at 10:11am
	Thank you so much! This is a rental house and I am going to try to talk the owners in to letting me do this. I think it would be easy to re-grow grass later after using the land for a garden. So I would put the compost on top of the cardboard?
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greenmann Rainy Side Gardener Joined: Jan-13-2006 Location: Washington, Puget Sound Corridor Posts: 409	Posted: Nov-18-2009 at 12:26pm
	You might want to find out if you can build raised beds too. YOu can put the cardboard under the beds, then fill with good soil designed for raising veggies, rather than having to deal with trying to make what you have work. Plus, raised beds just generally work better in our climate for vegetables. There are a number of reasons for this, which you can read in the section on veggies, but it also would make removing these later relatively simple, if labor intensive. And yes, grass is easy to replace later.
	Green Man Gardens design and consulting with a focus on native plants and wildlife habitat
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