Using corrugated cardboard and a few boxes I’ve covered a few large portions of my yard in an attempt to plant more natives and a few well adapted plants. Some areas of my lawn have been cleared of lawn already by colorization but I’m hoping to be able to plant directly over lawn using cardboard to suppress grass instead. Let’s see! Looking into chip drop after rain clears up in my area.
by 9021Ohsnap
10 Comments
I was sweating until I read the chip drop part. You could also order topsoil & seed some natives!!
Cardboard works great! I used it to clear the turf grass for my garden beds and their walkways. If you can’t get a chip drop, I love the cedar chip shavings tractor supply has in those giant bags. Way cheaper than normal mulch, not nearly as heavy so there’s less compaction and better airflow while keeping some moisture in. Also any seeds you throw under the fluffy layer of shavings push up through it super easy!
This is a good way to deal with the grass at the beginning stages. I’m in about year 4 of my native garden with many of the plants you have here, and this year I just had to dig out 2 clumps of grass. The rest of the area has naturally filled in and I barely needed to control any weeds/grass
That being said, remember that natives often get floppy when they are kit surrounded by many plants. They naturally grow around crowded root spaces and with plants around them to help keep them upright. I remember being a little disappointed how floppy they were the first year
Yep..just throw a good layer of compost and mulch and this is a pretty effective minimal dig method of gardening. I’ve done this with pretty decent results..I used plain brown uncoated paper instead of cardboard, but same difference.
Just make sure that you’ve got a good overlap on that cardboard – I usually do about six inches, minimum. That should set you up for a very nice garden 😄
I’ve been doing areas of my yard for the last four years with this method. For the first year you have to stay on top of grass that manages to poke through but it’s pretty effective.
I have grass growing around my plants because I didn’t do a good enough job removing it around where I planted 🙁 any good techniques?
Looking at your growing zone and location I do wanna be the devil who makes the suggestion to try out a grass selective herbicide. I can’t quite tell from your picture, but a lot of southern grasses (both turf grasses and weeds) are much more aggressive than what people are dealing with in the midwest or coasts (some, like Bermuda grass, actually love the sheet mulch method)
If you see your plants suffering due to the pressure from the grass, it might be more ecologically beneficial chemically remove the grass so the natives can better establish.
Nice, i’ve done that too. works great! The only problem I ran into was that the critters seemed to have an easier time zeroing in on where to dig. Don’t know why maybe they could smell the mineral content in the soil or something , but worked great otherwise.
I skipped the cardboard – but about a 6” thick layer of mulch down in October. The grass under it is dead and gone. I don’t regret not going through the trouble of cardboard.