Removing grass to prepare a garden plot

[smpayne]

I want to turn part of my lawn into a vegetable garden. I started to dig up the grass, man what a PIA. It is highly invasive and what I would call crab grass, the roots are thick, deep, spidery and spread everywhere and really hard to get up. Using a standard shovel to dig up everything, is extremely labor intensive and I find I still miss quite a bit. I am willing to rent some equipment, but don't want to rent something that isn't going to do the job I invision.

How far down should I dig, and what kind of board should I use to keep the grass from invading again?

[Katie T]

I just till up the grass and all every yr. (it isn't grass it is weeds that are in place of our grass ) I then throw the clumps of grass out of the bed. But then I just weed when needed, every week or week and a half. It works just fine for us. We don't do a border of any kind to keep the other weeds/grass out.

With everything else going on this is the best we can do. We get a good harvest thanks to all the tilling but I keep trying to remember to lay a tarp down as soon as the snow melts to kill everything that is where I am going to till. Maybe next yr lol.

[HeatherAtHome]

I had (have!) the same type of grass in my garden space. The area was really wild and weedy looking with a lot of layers of dead grass. What I did was rake all the dried stuff up in the spring before anything grew. Then we tilled the area twice, raked it, tilled it, raked it, formed beds and raked the beds a bit more. Tilling broke it all up and raking took out a lot of the roots. I guess every little root you leave will grow grass so the more you get out, the better off you are. I still have grass growing in the garden but the areas that I raked more had less.

[smpayne]

I just didn't want to rent the tiller if I wasn't sure it was going to work to remove the grass. I already know the small cultivators don't work, but it sounds like a large tiller would.

[ivymae]

We rented a sod lifter (sod cutter?) a few years ago ($40 a day from HD) for a different project, and it took everything out, weeds, grass, thatch, old mulch, even some black plastic that a previous owner had put down. It's loud, gas powered and has a learning curve, but we blew through a 20x20 foot patch in a few hours.

[jamireles]

You could always try the layering method. We did this in our front yard. We put down heavy cardboard and covered it thickly with horse manure, leaves, and then mulch. You could also just cover it with compost or straw, or any type of mulch. The cardboard will smother the grass and it will break down. You can also use several layers of newspaper.

We put ours down in late fall and we were able to plant into by March or so. I recently pulled up the old plants, and the soil that is there now turns over really easily and looks nice and dark.

[Indigo73]

Originally Posted by jamireles

You could always try the layering method. We did this in our front yard. We put down heavy cardboard and covered it thickly with horse manure, leaves, and then mulch. You could also just cover it with compost or straw, or any type of mulch. The cardboard will smother the grass and it will break down. You can also use several layers of newspaper.

We put ours down in late fall and we were able to plant into by March or so. I recently pulled up the old plants, and the soil that is there now turns over really easily and looks nice and dark.

This is the method I plan to use this fall/winter. I am very excited to finally have a yard big enough & sunny enough to have a garden. Although I am probably still going to continue container gardening.