* Transforming The Lawn Into Garden Beds

CREATING THE GARDEN.

Here we are laying out a hose as we design the space for our new biointensive garden beds. I got the idea to use a garden hose for laying out prelimenary dimensions from the show Curb Appeal. Anyway, we figured out the best location - close to the house, but not too close as to be in the shade of the house for the majority of the day, full sun for probably at least eight hours a day, good level ground, and a nice north-south orientation for the direction of the (future) beds. We found some temporary poles to mark the four corners and used natural twine to mark the borders. We made sure that our measurements were exact, measuring from all sides, so the beds will be uniform - which looks good and makes planning the space you have for plants much easier.

We used a D-handle flat digging spade, or flat shovel, to cut into the grass along the edge of the bed and to cut out squares in the grass so we could remove a section at a time. We used a standard shovel to get under the grass and break up the roots’ hold on the soil. Before totally removing each square, we rubbed the bottom of the sod to return as much soil as possible to the bed. Note: normally lawn is converted into a bed in the fall, when one can easily lay down a layer of mulch, like cardboard, on top of the grass for several months until the grass dies on its own. We didn’t have that opportunity, but removing the grass like this turned out to be a lot easier than we thought it would be. It did take us until sunset to finish removing all the sod from the bed. Under one square of grass, Adam found a penny from 1939.

Slide Show Music - “Don’t Be Shy” by Cat Stevens