The Many Methods to Eradicate Lawn

There are a few ways to convert your landscape into planting beds. Two of the most commonly suggested are sheet mulching and solarizing — both of which can do more harm than good. Why? Let’s look at both, and then eventually some suggestions for better ways.

Sheet Mulching
Basically you beg friends and neighbors for as much cardboard as you can and place it over lawn or other plants you want smothered. This is followed by a good watering to soak the cardboard well, then perhaps a layer of soil or compost — several inches or more. Some will also top this with a few inches of wood mulch or just use mulch. The goal here is to create a plantable area without having to remove current vegetation.  But what’s wrong here? It limits air and water transfer between the soil (its organisms and any tree / shrub roots which need to breathe). Read more at this link, or if you like termites, this one. And what if you have thousands of square feet to convert? That’s a lot of cardboard.

Solarization
In this method you’re putting either black or clear plastic over an area, secured around the edges by bricks or stones, and baking the plants to death that you don’t want. Usually you’ll solarize over a few months in summer when it’s the hottest out (the ideal method being four weeks on, two weeks off to allow new weeds to germinate and exhaust the seed bank, four weeks on, repeat for the entire growing season). However, solarization doesn’t just bake plants — it bakes the soil, in effect sterilizing it. Or more to the point, killing organisms in the soil you probably want. Usually this method is used to kill soil pathogens and pests that growers and those in agriculture don’t want — so why would you use it in your garden if what you want is to promote healthy soil? And promoting healthy soil is good gardening 101. One final point, what do you do with all of that plastic trash? And all of the microplastics coming off plastic that cause us and other species a ton of harm? Talk about an environmental dilemma.

What else could you do? Read on.

Sodcutter
If you’ve got lawn nothing beats renting a sodcutter. And if you can’t manage this machine or have a trailer to haul it then maybe bribe your beefy neighbor. What’s wonderful is you get a clean, relatively smooth, ready-to-go surface in one morning. And the rolled up sod makes stupendous compost — just the best black gold. What’s not so wonderful is the exhaust from the machine and the gas you’ve used, and the highly disturbed site with weed seeds now having access to sunlight.

You’ll Hate Me For This
The ends can often justify the means. As much as we vilify glyphosate (rightly so given how much of our nation’s ag fields are doused in cancer-causing toxins), this is a fantastic, cheap grass and weed killer that with the right formulation targets only foliage. You may only need one application and the ground is safe to plant after 3-4 days (I’ve done it). If you’re still reading and you go this route, follow the directions. Spray in the late evening in calm wind when the temperature is right. READ THE DIRECTIONS. The dead grass makes a nice mulch to plant into, as well. This method is probably best for a large area. If you want to seed in spring, rake away the dead grass for a fairly clean surface, otherwise a late fall and winter seeding is best right into the dead grass.

Direct Planting Into Lawn
If you’ve got a patchy lawn area, and / or one you seldom if ever water and fertilize, you already may have a great garden bed. In spring when the grass is actively growing scalp it. Two weeks later when it’s recovering scalp it again. Stress it hard. Suck those nutrients and energy out of the roots it was using to put on new growth. Then dethatch the lawn well with a hand or power rake. Go ahead and rip grass roots out of the soil as during this process you are creating places for planting and seed germination. Sow seeds if you’re going for a wild meadow look and crossing your fingers, or combine seeding with planting potted material to ease your budget but have more intention with faster results, or go just with potted plants / plugs (making sure to plant on 8-12″ centers to compete against the lawn).  I might suggest using a more highly-sociable, early-succession, biennial native species like Rudbeckia hirta or Ratibida columnifera along with annuals, as these plants do a stellar job shading out various lawn grasses and, by the end of year two, have petered out extensively since they work more on a biennial schedule. Then you can go back in and garden or plant some more as you design and tweak the space.