I usually spray Roundup two weeks before turning the soil and then I cut squares out with a shovel and turn them over and then cut them up with the shovel as best as I can. This kills the grasses and weeds pretty well. About two weeks later I add granular fertilizer and chop up the dirt some more.

Just tilling a patch of lawn cuts up the grass but does not kill all of it. Many of the little peices can/will resprout. If you don't want to use Roundup I still suggest turning over the sod to smother kill the grass for a couple of weeks before tilling, and then mulch well because there will probably be a lot of seeds waiting to sprout.

I dug up the ground for half of my corn patch last fall and decided to expand this spring. It was more difficult to dig the dry soil in the fall, but after it rested over winter the soil was nice and soft and easy to work. It gave the turned under grass time to decay and add nutrients to the soil. For the portion done this spring it was easier to turn over the sod more difficult to even out the soil for planting. There also seemed to be nutrient issues.

A Picture is worth a thousand words, here is what I did.

January 2011

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February

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March 2011

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April 2011

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May 2011

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June 2011

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Great job, Jon, showing start to finish!

Corrine

I absolutely agree Jon that cardboard can work wonders. Do you know what kind of grass it is? Sometimes in a hot climate you can solarize the grass and then use the cardboard. We've pinned black plastic to the grass and that heats it up so that it burns (especially great for invasive grasses). Some grasses here, if tilled will only spread and become much worse: Johnsons Grass, Nut Sedge and bermuda grass are particularly noxious. If leave one little piece of the root they will grow a new plant, so tilling or turning without a total kill will be difficult to manage by spring.
In really tough areas, especially full of bermuda I have sprayed and then solarized. Spray with a kill product very lightly and only on the foliage. Use as little as possible. Let it sit in hot sun for a day or two and then pin down some black plastic to finish the job. If you do this now, you could clear it out in early August to plant by mid-late August (right on schedule!).

I have both in-ground gardens, raised beds, and container gardens and if you have the space then raised beds are the way to go. There are 100s of discussions here on how to build them and what to fill them with.

I agree on the cardboard base - cheap to free, readily available, works well, worms love it, lots less work and no weed killer required. Then build a framed 8-12" deep raised bed on top of it in whatever dimensions you want.

Dave

Cardboard is the way to go. Mow the grass, put the cardboard down, hold it down. You can hold it down with mulch (straw) or rocks & bricks. The cardboard will rot faster under the rocks and bricks (better contact with the soil), so you may have to shift them occasionally. You will be very pleasantly surprised to see what the soil looks like next spring.

RoundUp isn't as benign as the producer led everyone to believe.

Tilling stirs up all the weed seeds and distributes them quite evenly through the soil, and destroys most of the beneficial micro-life in the soil by exposing it to light, air and heat. Soil is life, not just stuff to hold the plants.

Furniture and appliance store are good sources of cardboard. If you have a plastics factory around, ask if they discard their Gaylords (most do) and ask if they have a schedule get there before the cardboard recyclers do). Gaylords are large multi-ply sheets of cardboard that hold bags of plastic bits for processing. They are absolutely WONDERFUL for this use, and they last a lot longer than single-ply.

Sue

Starting now is good because you have plenty of time until next spring. I am also in the process of building my garden borders right now, and once finished, hopefully today or tomorrow, I'll be laying down construction plastic over the whole area to solarize the grass. The plastic is free for me, being scraps from work, so that's why I'm using it. If I didn't have the free plastic, I'd use newspaper or cardboard instead, although I take pride in not letting my yard look like a trailor park, so I try to avoid anything sloppy looking. I live in a nicer area, where everyones yards look fairly neat and clean, so some of the gardening practices others use aren't my top choice. For example, using old tires for borders or raised beds, among many other dumpster fodder items. If I lived in the boonies, with no neighbors, it wouldn't be a big deal, although I am a somewhat tidy person, so it would give me anxiety to have to look at a sloppy mess in my yard. Anywho, if you put something down right now, by fall you should have not only killed it, but rotted it away, so you can till it up and mix compost or manure in, if that's your plan. Good luck!

Joe

Wow Joe, got any more insults or put-downs you can slip in that paragraph?

I think it is safe to say that we all take pride in our gardens, even those who live in trailer parks. Way out here in the boonies we all do the best we can with what we have to work with and what we can afford. And many take great pride in recycling dumpster fodder too.

Dave

For our climate and tough grasses and weeds, I agree with girlgroupgirl. You can skip the Round-up if you want but don't till if you have bermuda unless you do it before solrizing and smothering.

I would solarize the soil and then mulch heavily with a thick layer of cardboard on the bottom and whatever your choice of mulch is on top. I would solarize longer than a couple of weeks. 2 weeks never seems to do it for me.

Dave, sorry if you took offense, as that was not my intention. My intention was to provide options that are more tidy in appearance, because as I mentioned, in some areas, such as mine, you cannot get away with anything too sloppy looking. If I lived in the boonies, which I plan to someday, I wouldn't stress over it too much. Everyone lives in different neighborhoods, with different styles and appearances, so sometimes the options for one person aren't the same for the next, which is what I was referring to. As for recycling stuff and using it for your gardens, that's fine, I have no problem with it, but that's not my thing. I take pride in sepearting my recyclables from my garbage, but I just don't get into figuring out where to use it elsewhere. So again, if I offended you, please accept my appology.

Joe

Thanks for the replies. I have tons of cardboard boxes left over from the move so I may try that. I'll lay them out this week and let them start the work for me.

I took a different approach for my first garden -- stripped the sod, knocked the soil off it back into the bed, and threw the grass and roots in the compost pile. Then added purchased compost, bone meal, and greensand and forked it in down as far as I could. I got the best results by double-digging down to about 18".

If the cardboard approach works to kill your grass and its roots, great -- then you can skip the first step, and it will enrich your soil as it rots. If not, or you want to get a head start, stripping first is more work but in the end you can add the composted sod back to your garden.

I also found that, for growing vegetables, 3- or 4-foot-wide beds work really well, with strips of grass (ideally wheelbarrow-width) between. The grass holds the soil in the paths in place and doesn't become muddy, and you can walk or kneel on it to reach into the beds. Ed Smith, Eliot Coleman, and other gardeners have written about the advantages of wide rows separated by permanent paths.

For my second garden, in a very stony pasture, I used a BCS two-wheel tractor with a Berta rotary plow, which tears up the sod and throws rocks out to the side, then tilled in manure. The whole job of building a 5,000-square-foot garden (2,000 square feet of planting space) took a weekend. If you can rent one, it's worth it.

I know this is late in the thread but I just thought I would add my thoughts for late bloomers like me who find this post.

I spray round up that kills grass and weeds, then I wait a week and hit again, then after a week I till, then I spray one last time and cover with weed mat.(I do weed mat before and after chicken wire to prevent future rusting at a rapid rate (raised garden bed). I use (2x10) treated wood planks to frame in my garden, Then I lay chicken wire for gofers. Then I Lay fresh soil (your choice for your garden type and area) I then start treating the soil with my old veggies and left overs from my compost pile, and I use only organic vitamins from this point on (all weeding by hand) come planting time I till/turn again throw on some fresh top soil and build my berms and start planting. I found if your not a huge fan of weeding and your near lawn, to prevent spouts from mowing, the raised bed gives me little more protection from lawn clippings flying around and the weed mat and new soil almost prevent any growing trouble makers. I go a little crazy and heavy on the weed mat but I hardly have to wee. I also built a raised compost pile on 4x4 legs that allows me to keep bugs and ants away via bug spraying the legs so my future nutrients can rot in piece without any issues. I also lay down some wood or cardboard in a hidden corner of my yard for worms to come up then I add them to my compost along with any fish remains from gutting my fish. I also have a chicken wire lid on my compost to keep out varmints. I hope this helps, I just moved into a bigger house so I am starting my garden all over (again) so I will send pics as I go in a follow up.

I would never use any chemicals for that purpose.
The simplest way would be just cut the grass/sod (at a thickness of the roots) haul it away. Then till/dig/ rake any remaining roots. Now depending on HOW HIGH a raised be you want to make , you may or may not need to condition and amend the foundation soil. If, for example, my bed was going to be less than 16" (or so) I would amend the foundation to a dept of about 6-8" and then install the bed frame and fill it.

If you feared rodents, you could lay down steel wire mesh at the bottom, edges brought up to ground level, before installing the bed frame.

Weeds do not normally com from 15" below. Weeds grow from the seeds that the winds scatter around or come with the soil that you fill the bed with.

BUT anyhow, probably we are talking in vain and the OP has already done with his project.

My first raised beds were 18" deep with 1\4 hardware cloth on the bottom. I filled them with city compost that is like black dirt, peat moss and vermiculite. I foolishly also thought that the Bermuda grass could not possibly come up thru all that. Ha! I then mulched around the box beds and sprayed roundup till the grass died. To expand my garden into the rest of the Bermuda grass area I went with a cardboard cover over the no till bed areas, and sprayed round up very carefully all summer till all of the burmuda quit trying to come up. Hope to plant fescue in my paths next year. The plants in backround are 8 foot high okra and the ladder in the back was to get to the 15 foot high red Chinese red pole beans, there is also about 8 tomato plants

Here is my raised garden. I put down cardboard or newspaper over the grass and used a mixture of topsoil, garden soil, composted leaves, and compost to fill on top of the cardboard/paper. Seems to work well. Very little problem with grass/weeds the first year.

Hi Everyone,

I like the idea of not using roundup and only using cardboard or cardboard and plastic sheeting. I'm wondering if it's still feasible for me to get some cardboard down on the grass to kill it and get my garden in this year? I have plenty of cardboard and would prefer to use the soil I have, rather than using a raised bed.

Thank you for your help!

You should be fine. You have 2+ months til planting time.
If you are going to do a raised bed, (for above posts) find out from the neighbors if you have gophers and use HARDWARE cloth, NOT chicken wire! Chicken wire will rot in a couple of years and gophers can get through it with ease!
What I do when starting a new bed is to break up the soil with a garden fork, add a good layer of composted horse manure, work/water that down into the gaps, then I construct my boxes with hardware cloth and Railroad ties (yes, from the dump or freecycle) or a wood frame of another sort, I then fill with an organic garden mix from our dump. I work in my own compost at least once a year (hard to top all the beds with the amount of compost I get, so I alternate them ). Every few years I bring in a yard or so of the garden mix to freshen everything up and fill the settling of the soil.
Last year I bought a small tiller from a neighbor that is just perfect for fluffing up the beds and mixing in the compost! I haven't even noticed that I've murdered many worms! They are very plentiful even after tilling!
And then I decorate! Bed head and footboards from yard sales, a manequin (Patricia) carrying her scythe, a town of gnomes lurking in the herb garden, a naked yard umbrella with morning glories climbing, fountain, birdbath and my hubby's hand carved furniture to sit on!
Sorry, Joe, I live in a neighborhood that has some hefty price tags AND live next door to a flower show designer and people LOVE to see our rather silly yards! A photographer friend comes to my garden every year to find hidden things in the garden!
Let loose and live a little! Nancy

Thank you, Nancy! As soon as the snow melts I'm putting down my cardboard. :)

Saxton,
Last June I decided to expand my gardening area by laying down cardboard. The same day I planted some corn and butternut squash seeds in that area--they grew great!
I just cut small holes and removed the grass under the holes, filled with soil and mounded the area a bit, planted seeds, and then covered the remaining area with compost.
You might not be able to kill the grass before planting time, but you might be able to plant there anyway (with a little extra work).

It takes a long time to kill grass roots but you can put down cardboard and mulchy stuff on top and then make holes and plant in them. It won't work for small seeded things like carrots but you can make holes in your cardboard and mulch and plant tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, etc. Then in fall keep all that stuff decomposing and layer more good organic matter on it.