preventing weeds/grass in new raised beds

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wildginger Fairfax, VA(Zone 7a) Aug 26, 2009

Hi,
We're planning on creating some raised beds for foundation plantings in our northern Virginia yard. Currently there is only a lot of weeds mixed with some grass. It looks like mostly crabgrass. One person told us to manually turn over the sod before bringing in new soil and planting anything. He said the decaying weeds and grass would add nitrogen to the soil. Another person said don't turn over the sod, just cover it with a thick layer of newspaper and then cover with new soil and mulch.

So my questions are: do we need to turn over the sod? If not, can we use rosin paper instead of newspaper to cover the grass and weeds?

Thanks!

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flowAjen central, NJ(Zone 6b) Aug 27, 2009

I've never had success with turning over sod, of course I have some heavy duty toxic weeds here...I always do the newspaper method. The paper you use shouldn't be glossy type paper.

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flowers_delight Leicester, NC(Zone 8a) Aug 29, 2009

ginger, I would pull all the crabgrass roots and all out with a spade if possible, digging deep enough to get the roots that way they won't come back to haunt you later. As for regular grass newspaper should work just fine.Don't know what rosin paper is.Flowergen is right about not using the glossy paper it will put chemicals in your dirt.Send pics when your done,would love to see.

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bugme Barnesville, GA(Zone 7b) Aug 29, 2009

I would not turn over any weed into an area I wanted to plant in......I don't add them to the compost pile either being very suspicious of any weed....HA!! They are the plants you see flourishing when your lovelies might not make it!!

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bellieg Virginia Beach, VA Sep 02, 2009

To get rid of crabgrass you have to use crabgrass control in April before the crabgrass seeds germinate. I am proud to tell you that we do not have weeds or crabgrass on the lawn nor our beds. For the beds DH sprays weed begone in the fall after everything dies down.We also use compost which are our lawn clipping.It is al ot of work and$$ to have a nice lawn and beds. Good luck. bellieg

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wildginger Fairfax, VA(Zone 7a) Sep 05, 2009

Thanks for the comments. We turned under some of the sod and used rosin paper, which is biodegradable (eventually). It's like newspaper, but thicker. So instead of laying down 6-8 pieces of newspaper, you just roll out 2 layers of rosin paper and pile the soil on top. We moved 200 cubic feet of new soil in by hand. Ouch! We planted inkberry holly and Virginia sweetspire. It looks pretty good! I'll post pictures later. We're off to get a few more plants for the bed and some mulch.

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