I am going to make a large garden bed for about 50 iris that I need to plant (in a raised bed). I wanted to know the best way to strip the top layer of grass off, level the ground and prevent any grass from coming up through the bed after i've planted.

Last year, I tilled a portion of the yard, but it just mixed the grass up with the soil. I constructed the raised bed and stapled the bottom with screen (to prevent critters) and lined it with weed barrier. It worked for a while, but the grass eventually came up. Is there a better way???

Thanks!

What I've done is to solarize the lawn by covering it with plastic -- in my case, black plastic, but others use clear plastic. (Walmart has 10' x 25' rolls of heavy black plastic in the hardware area.) Use garden staples every 1-2' or so, or lots of bricks, to keep the plastic from blowing away. After 2 months, the grass is dead (I've only done this in winter, so even winter sun is hot enough). Then it's rototilled, and I plant.

A variant is to kill the lawn with Roundup.

Now, the original grass is 99% dead, but there are still seeds -- lots and lots of seeds! And when you or the heavens add water, there will be new grass. And new weeds.

Something I haven't done (no sense? masochist?) is to cover the bare soil with newspaper and mulch, then slit the newspaper to plant. Several sheets of newspaper (cardboard works too) will prevent seeds from sprouting into new grass and weeds. Wet the paper/cardboard thoroughly (it will flatten to the soil better), then cover with a layer of mulch (keeps the paper/cardboard from blowing away and looks prettier).

Another way to prevent the grass and weed seeds from sprouting is to spread a pre-emergent in the new bed; that will keep seeds from sprouting for several months. (Some of the chemical ones are rather nasty; you can also use pre-emergents containing corn germ (IIRC Preen makes an organic formula which is corn germ; there's another brand which is sold at Lowe's; supposedly farm supply stores have larger bags for much less money).

I have made raised beds for veggies in a former pasture area which is full of nasty perennial weeds which are difficult to kill because they grow from tubers, bulbs, and similar structures (wild onion, horse nettle, morning glory, greenbriar in particular).

The first bed, I did not cover the original soil, and I had wild onion growing through the 8" of additional dirt (but only the largest of the wild onions, and none of the other nasties, I'm very happy to say). The later beds, I covered the pasture with a considerable amount of paper and/or cardboard before adding the new soil. No nasty stuff growing from underneath, not even wild onion!

Depending on how hard youwant to work, you could use a wide grub hoe or strip it off with a rectangular edging spade. The grub hoe takes a bit of technique and can be a bit rough on the back. The spade can be used to slice the sod layer off horizontally much like the sod stripper.

You could spray it with roundup, let it die for a couple of weeks and then strip it so that the roots below are dead. If you do that, make sure you edge it first or the roundup will translocate out into the connected turf that you don't want to kill.

Last time I wanted to use one, some years ago, the main problem was rental agencies no longer having them.

http://www.turfteq.com/products_dedicated.html

I also have a machine edger - but we just use and edging tool now because it takes less time and no gas. The same company who makes the kick sod cutter makes a kick edger - but even with all the edging i do as a professional I have a hard time imagining it being worth it since you only need to edge twice a year or so.

The rental place had those kick sod cutters for rent too. They claimed you could cut 30' in 15 min.

I should try that first., it'll be interesting to see how well it works and how easy it is to use. I'm going to check out that link too..thanks so much...:)

My fave way. Weigh it down with mulch and forget about it.