Converting the last scraps of turf at my house to a pollinator lawn -- killing the lawn.

This is part 2 of a series on converting the last vestiges of my lawn to a pollinator lawn. If you haven't yet, go back and read part 1.

In this post I want to talk about the various ways you can get from your existing turf into a proper seedbed into which you'll plant your pollinator lawn. Then I'll tell you the way I did it.

Before moving on, let me take a sec for a quick reality check. Converting your lawn can involve a fair bit of money and time, and this is true no matter how you do it. If you're here reading this, my guess is that you're curious and this isn't the only thing you've read on the topic.

The internet is full of people who converted every bit of lawn they had all at once. They show the process, they show the beautiful results. Some may show the hiccups along the way.

If you're thinking of converting some of your turf, this can be daunting. Don't let it be. Nowhere is it written that you need to do everything all at once. In fact, I'd say that you might consider going small at first until you are sure you want a bee lawn.

You might decide, after making a little patch, that you like having turf after all. So now you have the best of both worlds: some turf and a beautiful, low-maintenace garden.

Maybe you'll do a little bit and decide after a couple of years that you love it and want to go all in. Now you'll have the experience of that little patch to draw on and improve.

Without details (yet) that's how I did things. I didn't jump from an entire lot covered with lawn to the way it is now. I always figured that, just like adding salt to a dish, it's always possible to add more so I went slow. The expense was also a limiting factor; I had to wait for more money to build up.

In order to sow bee lawn seeds, you will have to kill the grass that's already there. This is no mean feat, but it is necessary. Your bee lawn seedlings have a hard enough time getting going. The last thing they need is to have to compete with established turf.

Below is a quick rundown of the various methods. Note that there is always a good and bad for everything. There is no one perfect way to do things and there is no rule that you have to only do one or another.

You might choose to kill your lawn with chemical, put on some topsoil and sow into that. You might smother your lawn with cardboard and put topsoil on (like me).

Take a minute to think about your goals, your resources at hand, and then decide. If you want, you can also shoot me a quick email at

info@goodthingsfromcoryskitchenandyard.com. I can help you come to a decision as to what's best for you.

• Kill your lawn with chemical. A couple of applications of glyophosphate (the active chemical in herbicides like RoundUp) a couple weeks apart will kill the turf and then you can seed into the ground a week after your last application.

  • This is a good method if you physically can't or don't want to try the others, meaning it takes the least amount of physical toil.

  • It also works best for small areas as the chemical costs can pile up quick.

  • It's bad because of the potential problems (overspray, potential harm to the soil ecosystem), and it's also bad if you have an issue with using chemicals.

• You can solarize your lawn to kill it. This would involve covering your lawn with a barrier like black plastic for a few weeks up to an entire summer (I've seen a wide range of opinions on how much time it takes--I suppose the safest bet is an entire summer). The endpoint of solarization would be that the lawn and any seeds in it are cooked to death.

  • Handy, again, for small areas, unwieldly for larger areas or in places like where I live (if I tried this on the Eastern Plains of CO, I'd look out one of our many windy days to see a giant sail of black plastic heading out to Kansas).

  • The good thing is that it's pretty low effort, and, depending on size, low cost.

  • It's also handy in that it kills all those dormant seeds so you might have less problem with weeds in your new lawn.

  • The bad? It can really do a number on the soil; when you kill the bad/unwanted there is no way to avoid killing the good. The soil health will be a minute in coming back.

  • After the solarizing? Depending on your climate, you can sow your seeds in at the end of solarizing, or you could mulch the ground in preparation to sow in early Spring.

• Cutting the sod with either a shovel or sod cutter. There are a couple of way to do this: you can cut the sod out to haul it off, or you could cut the sod out and flip it green side down.

  • Cutting the sod and hauling it off lets you trade physical exertion for speed. You are ready to plant as soon as you cut. The cost in time and/or money to haul off the sod can add up. Be sure to figure it in your budget (or email me at info@goodthingsfromcoryskitchenandyard.com and we can talk ways to get rid of it cheaply).

  • Cutting the sod and flipping it green side down is also a lot of hard work, but you won't get the speed. You shouldn't figure on being able to plant into it for a season. So, less cost to haul, more time. There's one benefit here, however, that I've taken advantage of in my raised vegetable beds: the decomposing grass is going to make a great topsoil for you when it's broken down.

  • Whichever way you go, DO NOT leave the soil bare for long during any growing season. Bare dirt don't stay bare long and weeds will colonize quicker than you think, leaving you with the problem of now getting rid of weeds. If you cut and haul, sow immediately. If you cut and turn, do so in late Summer/early Fall. Let the turned sod decompose over the winter. Come spring, till up the turned sod and sow.

    
    

What did I do?

I smothered my approximately 20' x 30' jelly bean of remaining turf with with cardboard and topsoil to kill the turf.

I chose to use bagged topsoil. It was the most convenient way to get it to my house (I drive a 1997 Geo Prizm) and it did double duty holding down the cardboard.

I can't lie. This was likely the costliest of any of the methods here for this size lawn. There are ways to make this method cheaper. You can always scrounge for free cardboard (best if you have lots of time and/or a small patch to smother). If you have a source of good clean topsoil for free (say, you are xeriscaping or hardscaping somewhere else) use that.

I chose to go this route, buying both the cardboard and soil, because I'm impatient and because of the nature of my soil. I knew I wanted to sow in Spring, and I made the decision to go with a bee lawn in January.

I also have terrible soil. I mean absolutely dreadful to grow anything besides bricks. All around my house is about 2" or so of topsoil covering feet of clay. Heavy, sticky, lumpy bumpy clay. The lawn you see in the corner not covered by cardboard is about as deep as its roots. That's why you'll see almost any bed I grow in on my lot is raised: it's got 2 x 12 edging or it's a mound.

I'd long wanted to do something to get a softer, less lumpy bed under whatever kind of lawn I had, so planting a bee lawn seemed as good a time as any to fix both the soil and make a more even softer layer. This means extra money into more topsoil.

If you go this route, I'd recommend putting the cardboard on in late Winter/early Spring so you catch the lawn while it's dormant and so the cardboard won't breakdown too quickly. I live in Zone 5 and work as a teacher for my day job, so Spring Break (mid-March was about the perfect balance to catch the grass unawares and to not have the cardboard rot by the time to sow in early May.

There's no magic to it. Get cardboard (it can be new or used, just make sure it has no plastic on it and take off any plastic tape) and lay it down. Weigh it down with something and don't leave any gaps. I would recommend about a 6" overlap at any joints, the grass can wiggle out farther than you'd think!

Watch your cardboard over the weeks between laying it down and sowing. It has a nasty habit of curling when it gets wet and dries and any edge that curls will allow the grass to get out. The grass may make a run for it and send out some runners too. I hand-pulled and sprayed glyophophate into the bits where I saw grass creeping out (not within a week of spreading the topsoil per the above though).

When it came time to sow, I broke open the bags of soil and spread it out evenly, and went to town. No need to move or remove the cardboard. That's why I chose it as opposed to plastic. Cardboard will breakdown and let the roots of the bee lawn scoot right on through to the decomposing grass.

In the next post, I'll cover the sowing and the problems I faced. Yes, if you decide to do this, you will have problems (plural).

See you then!