Hi!
I'm here because of the same reason that many of you: I don't like my lawn. I have known this a very long time because I know that when I mown my lawn averyone loses: I lose large amounts of time (and/or money), many animals lose a source of food, many others lose a place to hide and rest, and many others die in the process… but today I decided that I want to finish with this as fast as I can.
I started a pilot to kill a patch of lawn a month and a half ago and it went well but I wanted to show you my results and my methods to get some advice from you.
1. I bought a 2×4 mt2 black tarp
2. I cleared a patch of grass of the same size of the tarp using a lawn mower. I cut it to be the shortest possible.
3. I evenly distributed all the compost I had and then covered the patch and the layer of compost with my tarp.
Now a month and a half has elapsed and what I got is what you can see on the photos. My plan is to buy some native trees and plant them in the patch, cover it with wood chips and repeat with a larger area. I think I should not have put the layer of compost for it helped the grass to grow again even with the abscence of sun. Also, the heat from the patch might have killed all the benefical microroganisms on my compost. Next time I'll wait for the grass to be this yellow and then put the compost so it helps and makes the rotting process faster. Am I right thinking this way? Is anything else I can do for accelerate this process? Also, is this working as far as you can see in the pictures?
I estimate that each patch this size I kill I'm saving my self 20 minutes every two weeks of lawn mowing.
Thank you all in advance for your insights and advices
by BudgetSouthern9523
14 Comments
Your dog looks like a pig.
> I’m saving my self 20 minutes every two weeks of lawn mowing
It takes you 20 minutes to mow 8 sq m?
I’m so sorry I did not include geographic info, the bot helped me notice.
I’m based in South America, Colombia. Specifically I’m in La Calera, a high-altitude place with heavy rains and cold temperature all year long. We don’t have sesons other than a wet and a dry season. Unfortunately, these seasons has been more irregular and unpredictable the last years.
I’ll try to include this in the body of the post
Is that a pig in a sweater?!
Say more about the Pig
Does the pig have different sweaters for different occasions?
What kind of dog you got in the background?
I think I am more interested in sweater pig.
You should have covered the grass with cardboard or several sheets of newspaper then put the mulch on top, or skip the much if covering with black plastic.
Good job!
What species of grass are in the lawn? I don’t know the range of species in Colombia, but some species respond differently to this kind of treatment, for example *Elymus repens* has very persistant rhizomes that quickly re-invade after the top growth is killed.
If you can access waste cardboard, a couple of layers of this on top of the grass, covered with compost, grass clipping, woodchip or other organic mulch works well in the UK climate and would be worth trialling a patch.
Some vigorous species of tree, shrub or ground cover only need the grass suppressing for a few months whilst they get established and will eventually shade the grass out. If planting trees and shrubs, consider 1m square mulch patches around the trees to get them established.
Random but this reminds me of a method of insect farming where you put compost/manure/etc under a tarp or old carpet or something, make sure it doesn’t dry out, then pull it off for your animals to eat all the grubs and worms and stuff
I would believe the only way to accelerate the process is more tarp and cardboard if you have any available. I was impatient and just dug all my grass out, then cardboard and mulch. But it was a much smaller scale.
That pig tho! 😍😍😍