Turning a yard in to a garden?

Question

We are putting a garden in our back yard that has always been yard. We are having so much trouble with the grass growing back and choking out the plants. I try to pull it but its so rooted in its hard. SO I try to trim it to keep it shorter than the plants but its still taking over. We didnt think of grass and weed killer when we started. Would that work now?

Answer 1

your best bet is to start all over.  remove the plants from one section at a time and put them into a big plastic tub of moist soil.  then spray the area you want to clear of grass with grass killer, cover with heavy black plastic, weighted down.  leave it for a week - the sun's heat will cook everything under the plastic and kill it, including grass seeds in the soil.  move on the next section, replanting the other plants as soon as that area is cleared of grass.

Answer 2

Please, do not use weed killer, if you want to plant a garden.

First, turn the soil with a small shovel, and let it sit for a week without doing a thing to it.   Just turn it.   Get the soil PH to change.  Then, next, take the soil you turned, and make a trench, and take soil out it, and pile it.   Then make another trench next to it, and put the other soil into the first trench and keep doing that until you have the yard in soil readiness for the next step.   Then, take that shovel and get your wheelbarrow.  Take the sod and lift a bunch of it into the wheelbarrow.   Put rocks to one side.   Work in sections.

Pound the sod against the inside of the barrow, and then the soil will come loose.   The hard part of the sod set to one half of the barrow, and the soil the other half.   Then shovel back into the ground the soil that has come loose.   Keep doing that until you have done as much of the yard as you want.

You will need to set aside a place for the sod to become a compost place, where you set the sod.  Then layer it with cuttings of grass and weeds, green and brown, green and brown.  And turn it and turn it.   It is not easy to turn a yard into a garden, but you can do it.  Without weed killer.

Unless you want a garden that you do not want to weed.

Unless you want a garden that kills the birds as well as the bees.

Have fun.

Answer 3

That will be your best bet. You can start on another spot, spray some Roundup to kill the grass or cover the spot with black plastic and let the sun bake the grass. Then you can move all your plants to the new spot (after preparing the soil first), and turn your old garden spot back into grass....Good luck!