Converting infested lawn to garden - advice please - Update

[Crusty McPottydoodle]

So my front lawn has been destroyed. European Chafer Beetles invaded and the crows are kindly doing what they can to take care of the larvae. Unfortunately, this involves them digging up my lawn in clumps. Add to this, dandelions are everywhere.

Feller and I discussed the front and decided that the best plan of action is to turn it into a productive garden.

We need to remove all the grass and so I was thinking that maybe we should use a sod cutter which would take the dandelions down to the root as well as take away the rest of the sod and assorted weeks along with some of the bug infestation.

The only other thing to do, is to to use a shove and dandelion puller and do the whole lot by hand.

Advice please.

 

[noobiechickenlady]

Those bugs only go after turf grasses right?
Since you don't need to get rid of them, go get a lot of cardboard boxes or plain newsprint (ask your local newpaper for ends of rolls). Soak them with water & lay them on top of the soil, no digging.
If you use newspaper, put down a lot of layers, 7-8.
You can put a thin layer of manure below & on top to make the cardboard disintegrate faster.
Then layer a whole bunch of composty materials on it. Try to alternate nitrogens with carbons. If you use grass clippings, layer them thin, 1" or so.
Presto, a "lasagna" bed.
You can add some red wrigglers on top of the newspaper or cardboard to speed the process.

You can let this whole thing sit for a season or two, or you can get a couple of bags of potting soil & plant now. Just dig a hole (push the layers aside) put in your start & fill in with potting soil.

I built 3 raised beds like this last year and I've been impressed with the results.

 

[Aidenbaby]

I can only empathize with your situation. Half of our front yard was covered by rocks when we moved in and I can't stand that type of yard. I moved almost all the rocks and now the first opportunistic plants are growing quite well. Those plants being dandelions, nettles and weed grasses of course. Because we are moving towards grass, I have been using the dandelion digger and sprinkling a bit of seed into each dandlion hole. I'm hoping this accoplishes two things. The dandelion will have hopefully mined some of the ground nutrients up in the soil and the deep hole will give the grass seeds a nice deep root structure and shelter from the sweltering weather we'll get later in the year. Oh, and crazy as it sounds, I have only been digging up dandelions with yellow heads (easier to find).

 

[Ldychef2k]

If the bugs are not known to attack gardens, just let them die of starvation!

If you can afford to rent a sod cutter, I think that would be the best first step. But if not, you certainly can do it by hand.

I cleared a 35 x 70 area last year of bermuda, weeds and trees. By hand. It took months.

After I got it down to more or less level, I sprayed Roundup on the whole thing and covered it with very heavy black plastic for about six months. It didn't kill all the bermuda (but might kill your beetles), so I am working on that by hand. I then built three raised beds, ended up with ten beds, basically, but not enough $ for the raised part! Here is the result, as of last night:

Before:

After:

You may notice to the left that I am killing the bermuda in the regular yard as well. Tall raised beds are in the offing. The first ones are way too short for an old woman with a bad back ! I am going to start now scrounging materials and see what I end up with.

I want to be a VERY strong encouragement to you that this is a wonderful adventure. I am a "senior", partially disabled, and a huge whiny baby, and I did it...90% alone! You can do it. And if you have a little extra $ to rent equipment -- do it !

There are a lot of beautiful ideas out there to make a front yard garden look spectacular!

 

[TanksHill]

Wow, Ldy your garden has grown by leaps and bounds. I all is doing so well.

Crusty I am not familiar with the bugs your talking about but... I would get rid of that grass in a heart beat. Can't you eat dandelion greens? Just start some garden beds and worry about the dandelions later. Take them out as you go.

 

[patandchickens]

Anything you do for planting *this* year will require you to have a goodly supply of some other material, e.g. good compost mixed with topsoil (or possibly just really good compost). Like, a LOT of it.

If you do have access to that, I would personally rent a sod cutter, strip the sod off and stack it upside-down in a pile out of the way (covered by old carpeting if possible) to compost down over the next year or so; then spread at least 4" of your material on that and till or hand-dig to mix it "reasonably" together. Then plant.

The advantage of this approach is you will have MUCH less problem with grass in your garden. However it requires renting a sod cutter and doin' all that work, and it will take a year or two for the removed sod to become usable again in the garden.

Alternatively, you can (as someone said) just lay a THICK layer of wet cardboard or thickly-stacked wet newspapers on the turf, making sure to overlap seams well, then spread your material on top of that and plant into the compost mix (possibly punching holes thru the paper, there are both pros and cons to that).

The advantage of this is that you don't rent a sod cutter, and don't have the sod material taken 'out of circulation' at all. The disadvantage is that, realistically, you WILL end up with the cardboard or paper slipping around some as you put the compost mix on it, and some aggressive weeds will grow holes thru it anyhow and the grass will follow, and you will almost certainly end up with a nontrivial amount of grass in your new garden. If you stay really on top of weeding it up, that's not so bad, but if you ignore it til August or October and then say "Oh my gosh, look at all this grass!" you will have a great big fat hard-work problem on your hands, getting that grass back OUT of the plot.

If you are not in a hurry, you might consider just smothering the entire thing with all the old carpeting you can scrounge. Leave it that way til next spring. (can top with mulch or straw or whatever if the look offends you <g>). By then, the grass underneath will be about 99% dead, you can till in some compost if you want (or not, depending on what your soil is like) and you're good to go for NEXT year's garden.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Crusty McPottydoodle]

Thanks for all the really great ideas everyone.

I run a daycare, so I have be very careful how I deal with my front yard as my chickens have made it so I can't use the back yard for the children to play in.

My main plan was to plant a lot of quinoa. It is drought resistant, so not so much watering and it would grow tall and shade out the dandelions and such (they say that leaving grass a bit on the long side reduces the ability for dandelions to thrive as they can't get to the sun to feed - I was thinking that the quinoa might help starve them out).

Thoughts?

 

[patandchickens]

Are you wanting kids to be playing in your front lawn? Because if so, I really doubt that quinoa (or anything other than mulch or lawn) are going to stand up to it.

Or perhaps I msiunderstood?

Pat

 

[Crusty McPottydoodle]

It's more the have to be careful about having carpet strewn in my front yard - gardens are okay (the kids can help), but knowing the paranoia around officially agencies, I suspect they would tell me there is some reason or other that I couldn't do it that way. I was considering the idea of putting down some of that indoor/outdoor stuff, though.

I need to think more on how I am going to handle it all. Feller is only here for another month and then he is off doing his post-doc in Ohio until December, so I need make decisions and book his time (he has been spending a lot of time in the the backcountry getting all the skiing in he can before heading off for half a year of no mountaineering).

I was out there again today, and while I do have a dandelion tool, I still have to get in there with my hands to pull up what it misses, and have found that I can pull them up faster by hand and seem to have a better success rate with the roots (for the most part). Anyway, I think I will end up doing by hand.

The next big question is, should I use a roto-tiller?

 

[Crusty McPottydoodle]

So we just managed to finish turning over as much of one half of the front yard as we had decided upon. Part of it still has grass and we decided to get the exposed stuff turned and planted as soon as possible. What a hard job.

First hurdle - the tree on the boulevard outside of our property has HUGE roots extending into our property. Gosh, I sure hope we didn't kill the tree by lopping off all the big-arsed roots we came across. Upon discovering this root issue, we were glad we didn't rent the roto-tiller.

As we have been turning the soil, we have been coming across these beetle larvae. Today, we had the brilliant idea to save them in a container as we came across them and feed them to the chickens. Prior to this, we had been leaving them exposed for the crows to come and chow down.

Note to self for after the harvest and before next year's planting - let the chickens loose (well, in a portable run) in the front yard so they can do all the hard work.

We are going to plant quinoa and tomatoes and bush beans in that section of yard - likely other things too, but those are top of my list. On the other side, we are just going to dig holes and transplant my berry bushes that currently reside in containers (and maybe I will buy more). I may let the chickens loose in that side over the summer.

The rules around chicken keeping in our city (just newly legal) are that we aren't supposed to let the chickens be in the front yard. If I get bothered by the by-law officers, I think I will give them the option of letting me be and my chickens can take care of the chafer beetle problem (the girls just LOVED these things), or I can keep my chickens in the back and the city can come and deal with my problem in an organic fashion.

These beetles are all over the city - I was thinking today that I should rent my girls out.

Poor feller, he wanted to go play in the mountains this weekend (it is a long weekend for us) and I told him he had to stay home with me and do house stuff. I did promise we could go do some fun stuff too.

Anyway, that is the update. Anyone have any brilliant ideas for what else to plant?