How to Prepare a Bed For Planting, WIthout Herbicide
It’s that time of year when I start thinking about getting real with my planting plans for Spring. That often means getting new beds ready to plant.
March is a great time to start the process of killing off lawn or removing invasives so that you have a place where the plants can take their first baby steps toward establishing without competition from weeds or lawn.
What’s the best way to get an area ready to plant?
If the area has any vines or weeds, especially shrubby weeds, try to remove as much of them as possible. But you don’t have to remove lawn. Instead, smother it with newspaper and mulch.
Get a pile of newspapers. Or if you don’t know anyone old school enough to still read actual print newspapers, you can buy a role of UNWAXED craft paper from the hardware store. Be sure to get the unwaxed kind. (It’s used by construction workers to protect carpet from dirty workboots.)
Lay out the newspapers or role out the craft paper to cover the area for your new bed.
Wet the newspaper layer or craft paper layer thoroughly.
Cover with 3 inches of mulch. I prefer natural shredded hardwood mulch.
Then you’re done! It’s great if you can get this done at least 3 weeks ahead of planting time, because then the grass will be very weak by the time you start digging holes and letting the light back in. What happens is the grass and newspaper decompose, actually creating a layer of compost for your bed.
This saves a lot of work compared to having to scrape away the lawn layer OR using herbicide to kill the grass—which has a whole other set of problems. One problem is that it can kill or weaken the new plants you are putting in. Another problem is that even the once environmentally approved Roundup has now been found to cause significant environmental harm (big topic, that’s another newsletter).
Happy bed-prepping!
Chris