Creating new beds on a lawn surface

Hello all,

I am about to create some new beds for flowers/plants on an area of lawn. The lawn (turf) was laid about 6 months ago and has taken well. All the garden has so far is the lawn and now its time to start introducing plants and other Garden features.

The soil is clay; I have not measured the pH yet. Garden is south facing and so gets excellent sun. I noticed in winter, with frequent heavy rain, that the drainage was a bit slow - but now we are into spring, this seems to have improved.

My plan was simply to mark-out the shape of the beds, then create an edge and dig in amendments, before finally building up the bed with top-soil / compost.

Questions:

- should I lift the grass in strips to expose bare earth to work with, or simply kill the grass in place? I have seen advice about using wet newspaper to held kill off grass; I have also seen people just dig the existing grass into the bed. Is there ay "best" method or is it much of a muchness?

- I will be adding manure, which I have read is good for improving clay soil as well as introducing nutrients. As literature often refers to as "well rotted" manure, should I leave the new beds until next season, to allow the amendments a chance to settle / rot etc - or would it be OK to go ahead and plant in it this year?

- How deep should I make the layer of top-soil / compost on top of the clay soil?

Thanks for any help.

Any other tips regarding this small project would be appreciated!

 

I can't answer which is best dig in the grass or lift it off...

But I also have heavy clay, in the border I put loads of well rotted manure into it and planted straight away, no problems. If it's really heavy clay you can also add a bit of sharp sand to help improve drainage, can say what sort of quantities you need, as I didn't do this, but the manure and also digging in my spent compost has done the trick...

 

Hi Welcome to the forum

If me I would take the turf/grass off make life a lot easier for you in the long run and no bits of grass left in the bed , should be easy to do as you havnt had it long.

Once all removed dig a trench spade width and a spade depth and put all this to one side along one side of the bed , then use a garden fork to break up the soil in the base then you can add compost and manure into the bottom of the trench , then dig next to the trench another one and add the soil to the 1st one repeat the process until you come to the last trench put the manure compost in and the 1st trench you dug out this is the soil that will go into the last one.




leave for a week to settle and then rake over the top

 

Many thanks Ellie and Spruce for your tips, I will certainly take them onboard!

One other question which occurred to me is - should I take care with amendments, in order to avoid making the bed too "rich / strong" for young plants or will it be safe enough to add moderate amounts of manure and (new) compost?

Thanks again!

 

Hi

It all depends what you are growing and how rich the soil is ? already ?
If annuals I would imagine they would be fine for the 1st year or 2.

Nutrient wise manure is low on everything but what it does do , is hold moisture and adds organic bulk and get all the worms and beneficial microbes working in the soil plus side it helps with drainage as well . Chuck it all in thats what I would do.

Plus double digging will open up the soil , yes hard work but will pay off in the long run ...

Spruce

 

Thanks again for your great advice Spruce.

Yes it will be annual plants we grow. I hope to crack on with this at the weekend, if the weather is decent (fingers crossed). I will let you know how I get on.

One outcome is for definite - that I will have some aches and pains afterwards!

 

yes a update will be great, as sometime that's what we lack as in what happened..... blog would be good .

Just dont over do it , even if you decided to 30 mins when you get home is ideal spread over the week , with the longer nights and not raining even though we could do with a drop or two , I do try every night just to make the weekend a bit more relaxing than usual.

 

Thanks Spruce, I have posted a picture thread in the galleries to show how I am getting on. See what you think:

http://www.gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/threads/our-garden.95623/

(I will put this link in my signature, once I figure out how to do it......)