very new, just have one quick dumb question

please excuse this very amateur question but i want to start a small backyard garden this year...i dont want a raised garden...how do i kill all the grass before tilling? (or is that done after?) A few years ago i tried and we just tilled and didn't do anything to kill grass b/c I didn't know any better and thought it would all just dry up and wouldn't grow back but it did within a couple weeks. Dumb I know but now i really want to do this b/c i want to know where at least some of my family's food is coming from, and just sick of all the scary recalls on spinach etc...

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Originally Posted by teresa255

please excuse this very amateur question but i want to start a small backyard garden this year...i dont want a raised garden...how do i kill all the grass before tilling? (or is that done after?) A few years ago i tried and we just tilled and didn't do anything to kill grass b/c I didn't know any better and thought it would all just dry up and wouldn't grow back but it did within a couple weeks. Dumb I know but now i really want to do this b/c i want to know where at least some of my family's food is coming from, and just sick of all the scary recalls on spinach etc...

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Teresa, I actually took leftover tarp that had not been used, aired it out and put it over the area where I wanted to plant and left it a couple of weeks. When I took it off, the grass was gone, soil was ready to be worked. I planted garlic, fennel and basil. They are thriving, the grass did not come back, lots of worm activity and the soil looks healthy. Not sure if what I did was "right" but it worked for me.

Teresa, this may or may not be the best approach for you, but here's what I do and it works great...

In the fall or winter prior to the spring you want to plant, just take a shovel and turn over all the grass in the area that will be your garden. The turned over grass will deteriorate over the 6 month period before planting and it makes fantastic compost. You'll have an organically fertilized garden next spring that grows great!

You will have a few grass shoots come up in the spring, just take a shovel or spade and either turn them over again, or remove.

Good luck!

Love the idea of a tarp, and am going to try that today. I should have thought of that, because where I have wood piled up in recycle bins, the grass is nearly gone under them. Going to start with a small garden this year since I am running out of time for planting. Maybe a 8x8 tarp.. Thanks for the great idea..:D

Tarp is also good for slowing down weed growth. I put a black tarp over my tilled soil for 2 to 3 weeks before I plant my seeds and I make it a month or more before the weed battle begins.

You could also cover the grass with mulch (wood chips, compost, coconut hulls, grape seeds, pine needles, straw-- lots of options! or the lasagna method of alternating layers of cardboard, compost, wood chips, etc.) But when I say cover, I mean really deep. more than 6" deep. a foot to 16" would be ideal! Not only will this smother the grass, it will compost it, and whatever you end up using to cover will start to break down at the bottom on the soil surface and will do the double duty job of also preparing your soil for planting. It will add beneficial microbes, nutrients, and soften the soil. It will also help retain moisture, prevent new weed seeds from germinating since they will now be that much further from the sun's rays, and prepare your bed to produce the best vegies with minimal work and no extra watering! You just have to pull back the mulch when it is time to sow your seeds.

You can generally get free rough cut woods chips from your local arborists. Give them a call. It usually saves them money to not have to bring them to the dump. A lot of them have 10 cu yd dump trucks and only want to bring that much at a time. These are not "pretty" chips that you would buy at a landscape supply shop-- they will come from a variety of trees, and you never know what you will get. Sometimes they have leaves mixed in.

10 cu yds sounds like a lot, but if you are mulching 12" deep, this much mulch will really only cover about 270 sq ft (a bed 27' long x 10' wide, or a square approx 16' x 16') for one example

I tilled up some more of my yard last fall for more garden space this year. I started about this time of year for the initial tilling. There was lots of small grass clumps on top when I was done.

About every 2 weeks for the next 2 months, I made one pass in high gear (Troybilt Horse tiller) with the tiller set about one or two inches deep. That did a real good job for me.

Here is a couple pics of part the area I added. There is a lot more to the story on this area - tilling in sawdust to build up the soil, double cropping green beans after corn, but I'll put that in another thread if anyone is interested.

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I just looked at the date on this thread. I didn't know it was this old.