First time homeowner/gardener questions!

[Fujiko]

Mommas and Pappas, please answer a few questions from a new first-time homeowner and eager-to-learn beginner gardener!

Some of these are general plant/lawn questions, and other are regarding creating raised beds in our yard.

1. Our lawn was sodded a few years ago (best guess). If we are doing raised beds, do we have to till the lawn up, or can we just plop them down over it? While weeding, I've been pulling up thin black netting that I assume was used in the sod. Is that going to be a problem?

2. I get that slugs are bad (we have a lot) and that worms are good (also a lot), but what about grubs? We've been finding them when we dig up weeds. Also, what about rolly-polly bugs? (I don't know the proper name for them, but they are the little black bugs that roll up when disturbed.) We've also got a TON of creepy fat, black spiders. I surmise these are good because they eat bad insects, right?

3. I know this is off-topic, but is there a natural cure for ants? We have what I think are carpenter ants crawling all over our house.

4. We live in the Portland, oregon area. Is it too late to start a garden?

5. Can you tap maple trees in oregon?

TIA!

[serenetabbie]

I don't know a lot of the answers to your questions... but I do have some of my own questions

Yes, you can put the raised beds right on top of the sod. Just use a thick sheet mulch of something like newspaper or cardboard to kill the sod.

This thin black stuff... is it like plastic-y rough weave? It's under the sod? Or is it under a spot that maybe used to be a flower bed? If it is under a flower bed spot, I would say that it is weed mat. It's a PITA IMHO and pretty much a waste of money... I am super biased against it though, so I might not be the best person to ask about i! I ripped as much of it out from my garden as I could.

You could try diatomaceous earth for your ant problem.

Are your maple trees sugar maples? If they are, then yes, I imagine you could tap them.

I love your blog The name itself had me smiling!

[academama]

My only piece of useful advice is that ants HATE peppermint. Painting peppermint oil all around where they come in will deter them!

Of course, they'll just find a new way in, but it'll buy you some time, right?

[Rhiannon Feimorgan]

You can tap weastern broad leafed maple (which is what you probably have) you just don't get as much from it as you would a sugar maple. Sugar maples are native to the Eastern side of the continent although sometimes they are planted as a shade tree in western yards. You can tap birch trees to but again you don't get as much syrup. I think a sugar maple has a 10-1 ratio of sap to syrup so you boil down 10 cups of sap for 1 cup of syrup. A birch tree is more like 100-1 and a broad leaf maple is somewhere in the middle. More syrup than a birch but less than a sugar maple.

If the black netting is tightly woven, it might be landscapers cloth used to keep weeds down. That can be difficult to plant on top of as it stops root growth. It can be hard to dig up too. If it's more open netting, it was probably something used when growing the sod. The grass was grown through the netting to keep it all together and make it easier to roll out. It shouldn't be much of a problem when gardening.

[mindymom]

It's not too late to start a garden anywhere - it just depends on what you wnat to plant. Find out when your first frost date is in the fall and count how many days you have left. then when you buy your seeds/transplants check to see how many days it will be until the fruit is ripe and make sure you have enough days left in your growing season to get something out of the plant.

I don't think roly polys will hurt your garden - my mom has lots of them and they don't seem to bother her. Not so sure about grubs, though.

[LindaCl]

The rolly-pollies we call "sowbugs". They usually go for decaying leaves and stuff on the ground, but they will munch holes in the best strawberries if they get near them. But they like moisty leafy mold or garden litter type conditions best, so keeping the garden bed cleaned up might discourage them.

I agree-I'd put a weedblock under the bed instead of tilling (depends what kind of grass and seed is there, but for lots of them tilling won't help-and might make it worse). You could solarize first but that takes months. You might get the effect of weedblock by putting down thick and overlapping layers of newspapers, which could suppress the undergrowth coming thru for at least a couple years, and that might be enough to keep them out for good. But with newspapers you want to make sure they don't interfere too much with drainage in the bed. If the water collects and keeps the soil saturated at the bottom of the bed, that's asking for trouble.

[serenetabbie]

That is so interesting about the sod! I had to look it up, I had never saw anything like that. Of course, I have never bought sod and have only ever been on one sod farm ever in my life (DH worked there a few years, they did not use any sort of netting for the sod squares or rolls), so really my experience is pretty limited

I found a USDA report on sod grass farming, and this is what it said about the netting;

Plastic Netting

Sod tensile strength is enhanced by cultural practices such as plastic netting
that stimulate sod knitting. Plastic netting is typically used with coolseason
grasses that do not produce rhizomes. It also can be used with some
warm-season grasses.
Netting allows the harvesting of much younger sod and cuts 25 percent or more
from the time to crop maturity (Cockerham). Five Alabama sod growers reported
producing a centipedegrass sod in as little as 8 months using netting over
25 seeded beds, versus an average of 12 to 15 months without netting. Growers
who use netting have an advantage because they can supply the early spring
market (White, et. al.).

Does anyone have any idea how long something like that would take to decompose? How big are the mats? Can you just pull them out from under the sod? Why don't they take them off before they lay the sod down?