Do you need to remove grass or just till it under?

We are starting a new garden and need to know if we need to remove the grass or if we can just till it under? I can see needing to remove it to keep it from growing back but...I can see just tilling it under to use as "composting" material and if deep enough it won't grow back...help!

If you are planting this year, you'll need to remove the grass and roots. If you had turned it under last fall, you might have been able to get away with it. The grass roots will just sprout new grass and you'll be fighting grass all year. You can remove it, put it in the compost that gets turned regularly and be able to put the composted material back on the garden later. This year, since this is your first garden, I'd want as little trouble as possible to deal with.

If you bury the sod (digging with a spade, not a shovel), upside down, a foot down with soil on top, it will kill it and it will become compost. If you leave any grass less than a foot (or maybe 10 inches) down, it will grow up and into your plants. We certainly wouldn't get rid of it by tilling. In my experience, tilling just spreads the weeds around.

Cover your walkways up with flattened brown corrugated cardboard boxes. That'll kill the grass in the walk ways and keep weeds down. You'll need to weight it down with other mulch, grass clippings, or stake it down to keep it from blowing away.

That'll at least cut down on the amount of digging you need to do to just those areas where you actually need to plant.

Mulch heavily around your plants too, you can use more cardboard cut into the right size to fit in between your plants or at least along the edges of a row of something like radishes or carrots.

IF the grass is bermuda grass, I would lean toward excavating the area first. Only bermuda grass can penetrate cardboard, asphalt, etc...and revive itself. It's the devil.

It can get through concrete, ruin asphalt, move boulders...you name it. Yep, Bermuda is very difficult to control on a good day. You'll need to remove every scrap and piece of the stuff. It regenerates from thin air.

They say cockroaches will survive a nuclear attack. They will be sitting on blades of Bermuda Grass.

I had to dig up a bunch last month, although I don't know if it was bermuda, so I put it all at the back of the yard on a piece of tarp. I was nicely surprised this morning to see the birds picking out strands to build their nests. Kind of a strange way to recycle but I think Mother Nature appreciated giving the birdies some housing materials :)

This message was edited Apr 20, 2009 9:43 AM

Google "lasagna gardening" .

I just learned about it a week or two ago. It might save you a lot of work.

I expanded my flower garden twice in the last few years, and each time my DH removed all the sod for me. It took a long long time, was hard work for him, and it didn't break down in the compost piles as fast as I thought it would. The Lasagna Gardening method would have been a much easier alternative.

i asked DH to scrape off the sod before he tilled? or plowed? the new garden, but noooo, now i fear i will be having a real grass problem. he and his friends insist that to turn it under, as you say, Melody, is enough, but i dont see them hoeing the garden. lol.
i am going to put down newspapers, straw, etc to keep the grass down. i plan on being organic, no chemicals, except maybe Sevin dust.
oh yes,,, Bermuda is the debbil

This calls for a good mulch, paper, cardboard, leaves and such over all is good no matter which way you choose to go. The smothering of the grass leftovers after digging or tilling is always right. I think you would be good to consider all that has been said and then mulch too.
You will have a pretty good first year if you pick and choose and just expect a little less than perfect no matter how you do it. Next year will be better for the effort. I started all my beds some thirty five years ago tilling and mulching. Have not touched them since except to keep adding mulch. The top soil is now a foot or more deep after twenty to thirty years. I have never used harsh chemicals in the soil or on the plants. If I had ever figured out how to keep the birds from planting thistle I would claim permanent mulch darn near perfect. My mulch is mostly ground wood left in place to decompose. I like once ground because it remains mulch longer.
I hoe through the mulch to make new plantings or seedings then pull the mulch back up to the new born plants.

so now that my garden has been plowed, there really shouldnt be a reason for a tractor to be there any more if i can keep grass and weeds down? we could just till if needed? and then we could fence in the garden area to keep animals out? im thinking that a tractor in the garden every year isnt a good idea, that it would mash down the topsoil? this is the first year for a graden in this spot, and its a good spot, well drained, etc. it will be my permanent garden spot:)

adding compost, mulch, straw to the garden will increase the richness of the garden soil, and newspapers, cardboard would rot and also add to that once tilled under

i have already seen deer tracks in the garden, so thats why i'd like to fence it, but that would be out if the tractor had to be in the garden every year. i'd like to avoid the tractor thing if possible!

thanks for any hints, help etc

I don't see why you'd need to use a tractor for anything, depending on the size of the garden. A fence would do a heck of a lot more good in the long run!

St. Augustine spreads only by above-ground runners, so it's easy to eliminate. Bermuda grass needs to be killed with Roundup before you can assume it's all dead. Give it three weeks before you till the soil.

thank you, doc and mom:) i wasnt intending to hijack this thread, but i was really wondering about this, i do appreciate your help...happy gardening!

Hijacking is a way of life on nearly all sites. Not to worry. If Dave had a ten dollar fine for hijacking he would be a very wealthy man...........but then no one would pay up anyway. If he administered a drop the hijacker he would have no customer members left in about two weeks. :)

lol Doc! thanks, i learned a lot, i think have a plan now:) ...well at least i'm not completely clueless anymore!

BaBeegirl, Ks has some bermuda, but remember Ks burns off the prairie in the spring, n the prairiegrasses return by May, deep roots, u also have those winds pulling moisture out of the ground, black plastic weighted down, windbreaks to protect tender plants, sun, n voila! veggie friendly area- home to the green giants. Is always time/labor saving to keep a space around your garden cleared, too, cuz all that work u do, makes it ez on the weeds n grasses to grow, too

I know of only three ways to effectively get rid of grass ... the first is to use Roundup. Although I prefer not to add "chemicals" to my little piece of the environment, I've been told that Roundup only works on the plant, and does not really contaminate the soil. Of course, you'll still need to remove the dead grass. The second method is to cover the area with plastic, which will smother the grass. This takes a little longer ... probably 6 weeks or so, and you'll still have dead grass to remove. The third, as mentioned above is to dig deep. I've done this when expanding a flower garden, and it worked well. It was hard work, but well worth it. I donated my grass to a neighbor, who was renovating part of his yard. The clumps were about 10" thick! I filled in the area with two year old finished compost, and my expanded flower garden is wonderful.

Avid, i used the 'dig deep' method when i made my flower beds, filled in with compost, etc. my flower beds are practically carefree, the weeds and grass that i do have to remove are easily removed. i can't see using this method on my veggie garden area. i don't think my back would make it through the digging phase to be planting! lol .. i am sticking with my 'no chemicals' way of gardening. I don't count 10-10-10 as being a chemical.
After all the rain we have had, my cabbages and lettuce look great!...tomatoes are growing fast ..onions too. i managed to plant squash between rain showers last week, so far so good:)

Interesting.........Could you tell me what biological material is in your bag of 10 -10 - 10?

N P K ?

I think what docgipe was referring to is that typically a 10-10-10 fertilizer would be composed of synthetic chemicals, vs organic ingredients like composted manure, seaweed, bone meal, etc. Since you had commented that you didn't count 10-10-10 as a chemical, I think he was curious what the actual ingredients in it were. Typically organic fertilizers have lower levels of N/P/K because organic ingredients have lower amounts of those than the synthetic chemical ingredients do, I don't think it's possible to have an organic fertilizer that is 10-10-10.

oh, ok, now thats something else i didnt know! i would have to look on the bag and see, and i will. when i think of organic, it is something that doesnt harm the environment, doesnt kill or harm earthworms, and can be washed off when i want to eat it.
fertilizer is certainly something that i am not sure about, how much to use, when to use it, whether it affects pH of the soil. i am not even sure if i should be using 10-10-10 if i am wanting to be organic, it is just something that was passed down from my parents!

If you're trying to be organic, then you'll need to get rid of the 10-10-10 and look for organic alternatives. There's an Organic Gardening forum here, you'll learn a lot by reading some of the threads there, and if you need more help start a thread and I bet people will have a ton of suggestions to help you get started with organic fertilizers. http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/organic/all/

"Round Up it"--wait 1 week. Till it under and then mulch --then pull it up as it emerges through the mulch.
Mulch is a gardners "best friend"

ecrane, thanks, i will do that:)

When I break ground for a new garden, I turn over the soil in the fall with a garden fork so that the roots are exposed to the sun. I leave it all winter. Come spring all is dead, then I use spade it under to decompose.

I have also used grass killer in the fall on the area to be a garden. Then turn the dead grass into the soil early in the spring.

Either way works, depending on if you want to use chemicals or not.

This message was edited May 7, 2009 10:26 PM

I want to put in a vegetable garden with raised beds. I am considering using 6 X 6 treated posts to surround various plots in the garden - maybe six 10 x 10 plots. I would like to simply lay the posts on the grass in the arrangement I want (maybe run some rebars through pre-drilled holes that will hold the horizontal posts in place), leaving walking space in between - hopefully with grass which I will weed eat. Now the question. Can I just get a dump truck load of mixed top soil and fill each plot without doing anything to the grass - there would be about 6" of soil on top. I could cover the grass with cardboard and then fill with soil. I am anticipating that the grass will be killed and will never come up through 6" of topsoil. Will the dead grass be a detriment to any vegetable plants the first year or should I remove the grass?? I will install a 10' deer fence around it with a bird net on top. We have lots of voles and moles, would some galvanized hardware cloth around the perimeter keep them out?? or would they just come up and go over it to enter the garden??

JGRIMES I did what you said on my first garden (8'x12'). I framed it up, covered all the grass really good with cardboard and newspapers, then I wet the cardboard, then I threw the dirt on it (about 10" deep or so). Took no time at all and a year later none of the original grass has grown up through it.

I spray the intended area for a bed with Roundup. After the grass is dead, and on a day that is very dry I dig it up. The dead grass and roots come up easily, then I till and add amendments and plant. I use pink bark as mulch and it does a good job of keeping weeds down. I feel pink bark lets more air in around the plants and does not pack down like other mulches. Any thoughts on this.

What is "pink bark" if I may ask??

He meant to type pine bark, and it's excellent as a mulch.