Nature and Gardening

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Removing lawns to plant better things. Practical options for large yards? (self.greenspace)

submitted 1 year ago by insurgenRat to c/greenspace

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So digging up lawn is a nightmare, particularly if that lawn is kikuyu which is very common in my country. Every patch you clear will rapidly become colonised again without constant vigilience.

In an ideal world you'd rent something like a turf cutter, clear everything, and landscape from there. Unfortunately that's prohibitively expensive a lot of the time. Not to mention not always an option if you're not physically able to optimise the rental time with continuous work.

Solarising is popularly mentioned, but for a quarter acre of lawn that would take a loooot of laid down stuff. Doing it patch by patch tends to lead to recolonisation by the grass.

Does anyone know of better solutions for someone who can chip away for a couple of hours a week at most reliably? Where it wont end up in using all that time policing the edges of whatever you've cleared with spades and tears.

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[–] insurgenRat 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's an option, what do you look for in fast growing plants that wont themselves become weeds (temperate rainforest Australia for specific environment)?

I've found grass often makes it between cracks of cardboard panelling and that you need to weigh it down a lot which means moving a lot of stone. Are you suggesting something like cardboard and mulch, punch hole in it where planting and leave rest intact?

So far plants I've experimented with to battle the lawn have been clover (it lost), native tuft grass (it lost), pigface (slowly winning! but slow growing), native violet (died in sunshine), kidney weed (died in sunshine), warrigal greens (now I just have them everywhere haha but at least they feed the critters).

[–] plactagonic 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

TheKiwiGrower on YT made few videos about planting trees with this method. He is from NZ so similar climate as you so his channel can be good resource for you.

[–] insurgenRat 2 points 1 year ago

That's great to know. They have their own quite fascinating ecology over the ditch but I can probably transfer much by trying to match general theory.

I wish I could replant the rainforest on my block but it was cleared for powerlines (which I don't exactly begrudge given the alternatives to electricity are abject misery :p)

One day I'll retire to a dead farm nearby and spend my last years slowly turning it back into forest.

[–] LallyLuckFarm 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

cardboard and mulch, punch hole in it where planting

That's one way to to it. Another method is to cut the hole for the plant and a slit in the cardboard which you use to feed the cardboard around the stem till it gets to the hole you've cut. We'll generally use another piece to overlap that cut to prevent grasses from getting up and through as you described. If stone is the only resource you've got to put weight down I guess use it, but you'd get better returns if the weighted material can decompose and be moved around to smother the grass that peeks out. We use the grasses and weeds we cut/pull to hold down any cardboard in use, and we can move it around easily to do just that.

Don't have much in the way of plant suggestions for you but Self Sufficient Me and The Weedy Garden might be good additional resources for some species you could use in your project.

[–] insurgenRat 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mulch doesn't work well as due to clearing for powerlines I am basically living in a wind tunnel. On some days I have to literally tie everything down outside. I like to pretend I live on a big pirate ship on those days :p

I have a lot of rock, soil around here is about 10 cm topsoil and then sandstone so every time I dig I end up with a few dozen kilos to removed from the ground. It's kinds funny, anytime someone does excavation people start circling in their utes looking to grab some precious soil.

for garden beds etc I use a living mulch approach as the roots keep the soil in place and plants repair themselves after storms.

[–] LallyLuckFarm 2 points 1 year ago

Hmm yeah, a heavy wind influence will make lightweight mulches tougher to keep around without something like silage tarping similar to solarization, or thoughtful catchment. There are some interesting applications for windscreens are mulch trapping devices. I have a few resources for wind protection here that you may find useful if you haven't come across them before. We've used semi-densely planted cuttings as mulch traps on the edge of one neighbor's property where autumn winds tend to blow from.

utes

Aussie confirmed. Given your soil situation heavy mulch and weighted tarps as weed protection and soil prep for additional bed space is the way I'd lean. Damaged tarps from your transfer station or local folks would be an inexpensive way to get enough material you don't feel bad cutting to shape to suit the beds you're using them for - heavy organic mulch, tarp, stones to hold it down. It would give some of your less aggressive plants an opportunity to grow, and then you'll hopefully have additional propagation materials to grow the beds further. Some of our gardens grow like seasonal amoebas, growing out small clumps just on the edge until the area gets swallowed.