I mowed part of my front lawn at its lowest setting then tilled it completely till the sod was completely torn up. Then i threw a think layer of local "biosolid" compost on it that is heavily woodchips. The neighbors think im crazy now and there's a little bit of grass coming back up through. I wanted to turn this into a pumkin patch next year. Did I do this in the wrong way? Is there anything I can do to make it work better that isn't expensive? Any advice or feedback is appreciated.
by DefianceUnstable
6 Comments
North America zone 4. 🙂
I would just make sure that your layer of woodchips is thick enough.  I wouldn’t be concerned about a little grass here and there poking up and I would just remove that as you find it.  But if the woodchips you have end up disintegrating into the bio solids quickly, then you might get an influx of weeds popping up since there wouldn’t be much of a barrier.Â
If you don’t get groundcover on that ASAP, you will have 1000 different types of nonnative, invasive, and random native plans/weeds growing in no time. Learn to identify invasive species in your area, kill them immediately.
Just keep playing whack a mole with the grass, you’ll be fine.
Weeds will arrive long before pumpkin vines cover the ground. You might want to put down a green mulch of some sort. Clover, buckwheat, annual rye… It gets tilled in just before it sets flower and you plant X weeks later.
Your soil contains a seed bank of a variety of native and non-native plants. When you tilt it, you likely expose many of them. The addition of compost is going to give them a fresh dose of nutrients to start. I would consider using clear or black plastic to smother as much as you can in the early spring when everything starts emerging and following up with more wood chips about a month after that. Pumpkins do well on hills so you could really pile the chips on there and then plant your pumpkins in compost pockets in late spring when soil temps warm up.
How deep with the compost/mulch? 6b- We just flipped our sod over (root up) and dumped 5-6 inches of compost/mulch in late April, with no issues so far.