Gardening question

[patandchickens]

The following works well on all grass types I've encountered in the eastern non-deep-South parts of the country, and I suspect on most other grasses too. Only caveat is that it assumes you have 10" or so of topsoil or topsoil-and-decent-subsoil... if your topsoil is much shallower, you can still do it but will need much more compost (etc) and much more mulch on top:

Step 1. optional but very strongly recommended: Do not plant the whole 20x50 area this year! Too much to dig over and much, and also too much to do first-year weeding all at once. On the part you don't plant, lay down corrugated cardboard topped with lotsa mulch hay etc, or cover with black plastic. Pull rogue weeds promptly and fix the holes they came thru. Then next year you will have an easy (tho not weed-seed-free) time of planting that area.

Step 2: Dig the whole garden over, going as deep as you can (full depth of shovel blade) each shovelful, turning each shovelful upside-down as you replace it into the ground, so that when you are done, the grass is upside-down and buried underneath the dirt as much as possible. Note that you will have to remove some initial shovelfuls to get room to put subsequent ones in upside-down - dirt always takes up more room after digging

Chop the grass and roots out of these 'spares', then throw them back into the garden. Leave the shoveled colds of dirt loose and lumpy, do not try to break them up or smooth them out.

Step 3: put mulchy composty stuff on the garden, like coop cleanings, mulch hay, well-dried weeds, untreated grass clippings if you have any, compost, etc. Distribute them evenly, not in piles. Leave the garden alone all winter.

Step 4: In spring when ground is workable, lightly fork in that mulchy top layer so it's somewhat mixed in and while you do that also break up any remaining clods and rake smooth. I recommend you mulch the garden immediately after this, even if you're not planting yet -- but the way you've prepared the garden you do NOT need insane amounts of mulch, a couple inches will do it.

A few weeds or spindly grass stems may still poke thru, but very few - pull them promptly.

Thereafter, the less you disturb the soil the fewer weeds you will have (all soil has a nearly-infinite supply of weed seeds lurking, awaiting a shot of sunlight to let them sprout!). Do NOT till or dig over the bed unless special circumstances require, and try to weed or hoe as gently as you can. It will make your life much easier !

Good luck,

Pat

 

[Zylphrix]

thats a pretty big one to completly cover in mulch, topsoil, or even plastic .. plastic prices are going up too. .. I say bribe a friendly neighbor if you got one .. make a deal for him or someone to till it every week for 3 or 4 weeks and the weeds wont be a problem if you define your planted areas and hoe/rake the areas inbetween. .. not sure if this is an option for you

Mark

 

[silkiechicken]

Quote:
Hmm... wonder if that will work here in the PNW... *looks outside*

Cloudy gloomy skies.. too much water... chance of frost till mid to late may...

That's an interesting idea to try in areas where heat warnings aren't issued when it's tipping the temperature scales at 80 deg F.

 

[kayri]

Quote:
I've gotten cardboard boxes from appliances from the recycling area in our town and free truck loads of wood chips from a local tree service and covered areas at least 20x 50 last year. It was less work than I thought. Good luck

 

[snugglepup]

i'm pretty new to the organic gardening thing, but I have also had good luck with the black plastic technique.

I do know you should never put uncomposted wood chips on your garden, because they will suck the nitrogen out of the soil... I ruined a whole onion crop last year this way. sigh.

 

[gardener]

Yes wood chips will use nitrogen to break down. But if use wood shavings as your chicken litter and use that as a mulch the chicken poo being high in nitrogen, solves that issue. I would not want to use anything larger than the shavings like a bark mulch or chipped wood becuase it takes too long to break down. I also prefer to use cardboard over newspaper because the newspaper can be messy. I would only use those in areas that I dont work the soil much so I only use it places like the garden paths or permanent beds with a cover of mulch. It can be kind of messy to have to dig through wet mushy cardboard to plant seeds or starts in the spring. Unless you do the Lasagna garden bed method. Which is just a sort of layer composting. Start with cardboard then make alternating layers of soil,compost, grass clippings or hay, leaves in the fall and in spring just plant right into that mound. It is a way to start your raised beds off too.

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

Quote:
HAHAHAHA!!!!

I specifically clicked on this thread to see who the first person would be to link to BYC's sister site!

Now... I gotta think of a prize for you!

 

[dbjay417]

my method is messy, but time and effort friendly. Saturate the earth with water, or wait till after a heavy rain and run your hard rake through the mud. Roots will come up much easier from the mud. Wait a few days and see whats still growing, and go out and pull the remains by hand. If the ground has dried and hardened again, wet it again and go play in the mud.

You could also try laying a canvas dropcloth over the area for a week or two. I'm a professional painter and leaving a dropcloth over a patch of earth over the weekend always serves to kill some plant matter. Incidentally i tried the same thing with plastic and plastic tarps and it did not work. The plastic may have even helped the growth. it let the sunlight in and trapped moisture in.

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
Actually there's nothing at all wrong with putting wood products on a garden (and you know, paper and cardboard are wood products and have the same problem!)... you just have to either
a) put them on early enough that the initial nitrogen-consuming
decomposition is mostly finished before you plant, or
b) add extra nitrogen when you put the wood product on (this
is totally easy if you use nonorganic fertilizers, but is often quite
practical even with solely organic fertilizer use), or
c) select plants that won't care about a temporary dip in nitrogen
levels.

Wood products, especially bark or wood chips, have the very great advantage that they add fibrous organic material to your soil which in time will greatly increase its water-holding capacity as well as helping keep it loose and fluffy and easy to work without tilling/digging.

My personal preference, if you can get them cheap and don't mind the look, is to mulch with shredded bark or mixed-size wood chips... having fragments of all different sizes, from fine to very coarse, means that it breaks down gradually over a long period of time (spreading out the nitrogen debt problem) and only gradually tails off to mulchlessness, leaving the ground somewhat covered even if I get to procrastinating.

For digging things in to improve soil quality I prefer something cheaper and less obnoxious to dig in. We have half a loft full of very old ucky hay (ws here when we bought the place) and every year I put a mask on, toss some out into a giant pile, and let it compost down thru the year to where the inside of the pile is light brown and fragmented, then I toss it on the veg garden to weather for the winter before forking it in the next spring. I had a killer tomato jungle last summer and only watered I think 3x despite nearly no rain all summer, so I would have to say it's working so far

Pat

 

[SebrightLover]

Dad uses the rototiller and then black plastic.

I'll be doing the same for my first ever garden this year.