Getting rid of a lawn.

Hi everyone.

One of my tasks for this weekend is to get rid of the lawn in the remaining part of my garden in preparation for it to become a vegetable garden with a few raised beds and a gravel walkway. (ladened with numerous ferns in the shady parts)

I've got it in my mind that I can just remove the top couple of inches with my spade (ie; a small turf section) and flip it over? Am I right?

Ant.

 

Anthony

I'm doing exactly the same thing! I intend to build two raised beds 3m x 1.2m with a narrow path between, for vegetables.

I'm stripping off approximatley 9 square metres and I'm building the turfs into a turf stack in a corner of the garden. It's my new "garden feature"! In a couple of years, the stack should have turned into good top soil.

I wouldn't advise just turning the turfs over and trying to dig them in. It'll be very hard work, likely to redistribute perennial weeds and possibly traces of weedkiller you may have used on the lawn. I guess you might get away with it if you rotovated the area. But then again, maybe not.

 

Flinty's right Anthony. Take the top off as you would when turfing and flip them upside down in a pile in a corner out of the way where you dont mind them standing for a year or so and sure enough they will later provide a good heap of soil for redistribution. You have certainly got a lot of work on there. I intend to strip a shrubbery and turn it into a veg patch in the autumn so am not looking forward to that. Particularly as there is the remains of a euclyptus tree I cut down and a big caenosis which seems a shame to lose but the veggies must come first.

 

Flinty & Moyra.

Thanks for the advice. Stacking it is.

Ant.