This spring, we are taking the plunge and getting rid of our front lawn, or what's left of it. It covers about 200 square feet. It will be a lot of work for me (older female) to dig out the sod. After I dig it out, I will have to put it in the garbage. (We have a small urban lot and there is absolutely no place to compost the sold or hide it.)
So, will using Round-up kill the grass in a satisfactory manner? Will it leave soil in which I can plant new plants in a month or so after the grass is dead? Will the Round-up hurt the dogwood tree that is under the grass? Will it hurt the birds who visit my garden?
Normally, I am not a fan of Round-up, but it does seem like a good alternative to digging out all that sod.
There's no need to dig it out. Presuming that you're planting in mulched beds, wait the proscribed amount of time as noted in the directions (10-14 days as I recall) and then plant right in through the sod. Once you've planted your larger trees/shrubs, cover everything in thick sheets of newspaper or cardboard and mulch in... you'll be amazed at the fertility of your soil next season. All that sod will decompose and leach downwards, while the newspaper provides a great biodegradable weed barrier.
Like Dave said, wait the 2 weeks after you spray and then if you are doing a rock garden, put down a weed barrier (ground cloth) that will still allow for proper drainage. If you put the rocks on top of the dead grass you'll have them start to sink very quickly. You can cut holes in the weed barrier to dig holes so that the plants have contact with the soil below.
On a design note...
Small plants with big rocks, big plants with small rocks. Use at least 3 different sizes of rocks but don't mix too many colors. Home Depot sells river rock (or egg rock) that has a nice mix of colors and sizes. Your local garden center should be able to provide you with 3 large boulders (have them deliver them!) Use them to create a grouping and surround them with smaller rocks. Avoid the urge to put a pink flamingo in the middle.
Something else that works well is "solarizing" the grass by covering with black plastic that is well anchored down over it. The grass dies and decomposes due to worm action and you aven't lost any of the beneficial bacteria that has built up in the soil.
I have used Roundup. It works quite nicely. Once everything is dead and the 2-3 week wait is done, till the soil 8-12" deep. Add peat by spreading 2" over the tilled area. Retill to incorporate the peat into the soil. Now the bed is ready for planting.
It's always a good idea to get the soil tested for the type of gardening you plan to do. vegetables, annuals and perennials all have different needs.
If you are planting perennials, the extra time, effort and cost you invest today will pay back in the years to come. Poorly prepared soils and beds will only disappoint in 2-3 years as plant production begins to wane.
Weed barrier fabric makes gardening difficult. When plants need to be relocated, the fabric always gets in the way. Weeds still will find a way to root.
This works great but takes an inordinate amount of time. You could easily spend an entire season waiting for the grass to die and be reduced by worm action.
True. I never use weed barrier to prevent weeds. It's only real use is to prevent rocks from sinking into the soil. You can always cut through it plant something with a sharp knife. Remember our soil in S. Florida is mostly sand so small rocks tend to disappear over time and foot traffic.
I'm in Wisconsin where the ground remains frozen until August, thaws for a month or so and the refreezes. There are many in my neighborhood who have put down fabric and rocks round their foundations. These tend to be people who think that landscaping and gardening is a one-time event instead of an ever-changing tapestry of plants that fit the season and suit one's fancies.
Yes, it will be a bit more time-consuming as you will probably want to lay your paper down first, then go back and cut an 'X' for each perennial. Pull the paper back, plant in, and then lay the paper back right up to the stems. It seems like an inordinate amount of work, but your weeding and maintenance will be *greatly* decreased if you take the time up front to do it right.
If you're planning an alpine style garden that will use gravel or stone chips as mulch, I would recommend amending the soil really well first (but not tilling-- my experience has been that tilling brings up hundreds or thousands of dormant weed seeds which are activated by the change in enviorment). Simply top dressing works quite well-- I used this method for my front mulched bed (Roundup, top dressing, paper/cardboard, mulch) and in
2 years time I noted that the organic material had filtered down a good ten inches into our Virginia hardpan, creating a rich organic humus. Pretty much any organic material is good-- shredded leaves/needles, composted cow manure, peat, grass clippings, shredded bark, straw, it's all good.
I'd recommend at least two applications of Roundup spaced 3 weeks apart if that is the route you choose to follow. The roots of many lawn grasses tend to be very persistant and the double dose seems to provide better results.
Peat is pretty much worthless as a soil amendment and is non-renewable resource as well. Add some good quality compost instead. - not sterile and with greater nutrient content than peat. Adds better pore space as well. I do agree that taking the time to correctly improve your soil will be of considerable benefit in the long run. BTW, digging up at least portions of the sod (perhaps for pathways?) and piling it upside down on the areas you designate for planting will give your little front garden some needed change in topography that is visually stimulating and will accent your rock garden plants and rocks better than a flat terrain. Ad a few dwarf conifers to provide some height and year round color/interest, too.
Actually, though, clear plastic gets hotter quicker (and at higher temp). I know, it is counterintuitive, but true. The sun goes through but heat doesn't go back out, so sun keeps building -- al la greenhouse. And, SOME of the bactees may die; their susceptibility to temperature varies. But no big deal. They come back.
Jim Lewis - snipped-for-privacy@nettally.com - Tallahassee, FL - Nature encourages no looseness, pardons no errors. Ralph Waldo Emerson
2-3 weeks with clear plastic. It gets HOT under there!
Jim Lewis - snipped-for-privacy@nettally.com - Tallahassee, FL - Only where people have learned to appreciate and cherish the landscape and its living cover will they treat it with the care and respect it should have - Paul Bigelow Sears.
DON'T use Round-up. Glyphosate is detectible in soil a year after use despite company claims to the contrary, & it's surficant is a very long-lasting danger to watersheds & amphibian life. Herbicides are just generally a bad idea. It also doesn't work perfectly well on lawns unless SLATHERED with the poison on hot days -- if you use the correct amount within allegedly safe (but not actually safe) limits, you'll end up with patches of black dead grass here & there, sickly live grass in some places, dense roots no easier to dig out than if you hadn't made the grass look unpleasant first, weeds seeding themselves throughout very happily & leaping to life unless excesses of herbicide are slathered on again every time the wind blows, & what you end up with is a cancerous looking shithole of scabrous ugliness hard-packed & difficult to dig off the whole surface or plow under, just a crappy mess leaving you more work to restore to anything worthwhile -- just about as much work as had you not bothered to turn it into a patchy-scabrous & toxified horror beforehand.
As is so often the case, a purely ORGANIC approach is not only healthier for the yard (& the world), but even WORKS BETTER: Lay corregated cardboard or many layers of newspaper covering the whole lawn area that you want gone. Then place a sterile manure mulch an inch thick on top of the paper, which makes the area look rather like fresh topsoil, plus the blackness of the manure compost heats up the grass underneath, to the point of rapid death. The combination of heat & lack of sun kills ALL the grass & weeds, & worms turn the dead grass to healthful loam rather than you turning it to scabrous black half-living filthy-looking patches. Worms will also begin eating the cardboard & paper whenever it is wet, so that by the time all the grass has been completely killed by heat & lack of sun, the paper like the grass itself will be reduced to nothing but healthful wholesome loam. (Only paper that wasn't sufficiently buried under a layer of compost or never got moist will remain, there'll otherwise be no sign of it). Worms just LOVE the dying matter under the paper & the paper itself, so by the time this process is finished, the worms & bacterial activity will have aerated & mixed the soil sufficiently that it is all healthy loam, & loosened enough by worms to turn quite easily for gardens. There'll be no matted half-dead roots to discard, it'll be nice loamy soil.
I've used this method even for hard-packed roadside areas that were dense with weeds & meadow grasses. These were completely weedless with a season of such treatment. If I get impatient, the most that remains is some dandylion carrots, easily discarded as I turn the self-loosened soil. Large areas that would otherwise have taken weeks of agonizing muscle-aches & sweat to dig up were very easily turned with just a couple hours work. As you say you have no place to compost, you'd be throwing away tons of topsoil, but this organic method composts in situ & wastes no nutrients.
I have already this month turned a big roadside area into a new sun-garden & it took me about three hours. My sweety went off on erands & when she came back, there were in the morning there was nothing there was suddenly a new garden with torch lilies, succulent ice plant, rockroses, leafless fruit tree, rose-of-sharon, hybrid broom, & lambs-ears all placed out in fresh-turned soil. It surprised even me it took no time at all -- some of it having waited some whiole in pots to be planted, some of it transplanted from other gardens. It happened so swiftly it was almost disappointing I couldn't fuss with it for a week, it just all went together presto because I'd killed the grass & weeds by the method above & ended up with soil already nearly ready for planting. I wacked it a few places with a pick, shoveled it all upside down so that the topcoating mulch & the worm-devoured grass was mixed a bit into the soil, & laid in some plants. I'd covered the area late last year & it took autumn & winter to work, but if it were done in warmer seasons it is much faster, & you can even punch holes here & there & plant at least woody shrubs or trees well before the overall area is actually ready for an extensive perennial garden. I tried the herbicide method back when I was "95% organic" & would still excuse myself for cheating if I thought it was the best way -- but it soon becomes obviously never the best way & is not a labor-saving shortcut at all. Herbicides were not merely not really necessary, but still demanded much harder work to repair the resulting eyesoar, work easily avoided by the more effective non-chemical method.
Next roadside location to be similarly treated is for rugosa roses & an as-yet undecided tree. The roses are already waiting in pots for me to get round to it, biggish ones gotten half-price during an off-season sale.
I can barely walk sometimes and the way I get rid of it is by digging it out. I don't recommend you use chemical herbicides, such as Round Up because they are toxic to soil fauna and flora and when soil is not healthy, nothing else which grows in it will be healthy. Get yourself a sharp spade and cut the sold and dig it out.
Rutgers University had a huge field that was basically in wild orchard grasses. They wanted to reseed it with a good field grass blend. They sprayed it with roundup. Then a couple days later, they sewed the new lawn seed. The new seed germinated and came it at about the same rate as the old lawn died. Most people didn't even realize there was a change since it happened so smoothly and with such a gradual transition. There was so little residual roundup in the soil that it had no effect on the new turf.
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