What's the best way to turn grass/ lawn into a garden bed?

[DirtMechanic]

What I do is chop out squares, a spade width wide each way. lift them, and drop them back in the ground upside down and chop off any green bits showing round the edge, making sure they get well buried. Then I leave them until next Spring, winter weather breaks down that hard deeper earth and when I dig it over I find a layer of rotted grass underneath that I mix in.
It takes a while, but patience and letting the weather break things up for you saves a lot of work.

@Oliver Buckle the weather here was so perfect today you could barely feel the air. I actually had to look at our back deck thermometer and it was almost 72f in the shade. While we have cold weeks, mostly everything, well something, is growing. The fescues and winter weeds can be amazing. Poa annua and others have long since made there start for spring. To tease them up and churn their soil might just make them hungry. Or hungrier, as their case may be. Of course when the seeds blow it won't matter much anyway.

 

[Growdo Baggins]

What no one has mentioned is your grass. If it is a grass that has stolens or rhizomes, tilling it will just multiply your problems as each piece of chopped stolon or rhizome will start growing on its own. You can either dig up and remove the roots and the entire grassy structure or kill the grass by either chemicals or by solarization. Then you can till if desired.

Thank you. I'm gonna have to dig it up then.

 

[Growdo Baggins]

What I do is chop out squares, a spade width wide each way. lift them, and drop them back in the ground upside down and chop off any green bits showing round the edge, making sure they get well buried. Then I leave them until next Spring, winter weather breaks down that hard deeper earth and when I dig it over I find a layer of rotted grass underneath that I mix in.
It takes a while, but patience and letting the weather break things up for you saves a lot of work.

Dang that would save me a lot of work. I did the squares too but then I moved them to the edge of the yard with my wheel barrow. I flipped them upside down though. I'll try just flipping them over right there. It would be a lot less removal of dirt. Thanks

 

[Sheal]

Probably me too since I am 57 now. Anyway, the article was a pronouncement of an agreement of direction. Northern UK will be developed with various factories etc and they touched on the permitting processes which are socialist and easily voided when problems occur such as recognition of bad government planning*.

*Spoken from an unrelenting belief in private property and the attitude that derives from those perceived facts.

Northern Britain? I think perhaps the reference may be to northern England. Scotland has it's own government and is beholden to the English government for very little.

 

[DirtMechanic]

Northern Britain? I think perhaps the reference may be to northern England. Scotland has it's own government and is beholden to the English government for very little.

I think they will end up everywhere really. Here is the article:

UK plans a fleet of small nuclear reactors to fight energy crisis

The U.K.'s desire to expand nuclear energy as greener power has gone beyond its November acquisition of China's nuclear power plant and 50 percent share in the company planning the megaproject on England's east coast.

interestingengineering.com

 

[Growdo Baggins]

I love being able to talk to farmers around the world. I always picture soil in England being rich and dark. Also with hordes of coins buried within. If I lived in Europe I would be an avid metal detector. Or at least a human that uses a metal detector avidly.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Dang that would save me a lot of work. I did the squares too but then I moved them to the edge of the yard with my wheel barrow. I flipped them upside down though. I'll try just flipping them over right there. It would be a lot less removal of dirt. Thanks

Some people strip the grass off as thinner turves , then roll them and stack them, they rot down to something really nice after a year or two. As someone pointed out you may not get the sort of winter weather to break down the soil that we do in England.

 

[Growdo Baggins]

Some people strip the grass off as thinner turves , then roll them and stack them, they rot down to something really nice after a year or two. As someone pointed out you may not get the sort of winter weather to break down the soil that we do in England.

I went out there yesterday and looked at my big pile of turf i made when i did the garden beds this past summer. I think you're right about the sort of winter I get here. I'll have to let it sit longer.

 

[Sheal]

I always picture soil in England being rich and dark.

If only it was Growdo Baggins. I have sandy loam that devours compost and needs constant watering during the summer.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Yep, if only. When I start a new place there is a thin skim of top soil, then solid yellow clay. Last Feb. I tripped and fell face first on a place where I had turned over squares and it had dried out. It was hard enough that I lost my right eye in the impact. I have been working on that bit all summer digging stuff in, it has garlic coming up in it now.

 

[Growdo Baggins]

Yep, if only. When I start a new place there is a thin skim of top soil, then solid yellow clay. Last Feb. I tripped and fell face first on a place where I had turned over squares and it had dried out. It was hard enough that I lost my right eye in the impact. I have been working on that bit all summer digging stuff in, it has garlic coming up in it now.

Holy shit! I've hurt myself a good bit over the years, you can't help it if you're going to work, but losing an eye is a life changer. How difficult has it been to acclimate? I'm sorry you lost it.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Holy shit! I've hurt myself a good bit over the years, you can't help it if you're going to work, but losing an eye is a life changer. How difficult has it been to acclimate? I'm sorry you lost it.

I am 'lucky', Immediately after I was born I was put down on a hot water bottle full of boiling water and spent the first few months of my life in hospital. It means I have a sky high pain threshold and cope with trauma very well. The downside is when I do things like break my femur in a motorcycle accident, the ambulance man helps me off with my leathers, "They cut them when they don't need to" and then a&e keeps me waiting for a couple of hours for an x-ray, because they think it's only a bad bruise. Burns stay painful for ages, and that one was from shoulder to knee, the midwife had been knocked off her bike by a V2 rocket on the way to work and no one spotted she had shell shock. As a kid it made me really leary and daredevil, I rember being taken to hospital to be stiched up and the A&E receptionist saying "Not again Oliver", when they know you by name as you walk in ...

The only problem I have now with the eye is putting things through holes, like a screw in a drilled hole, have to do it by feel.

 

[Growdo Baggins]

I am 'lucky', Immediately after I was born I was put down on a hot water bottle full of boiling water and spent the first few months of my life in hospital. It means I have a sky high pain threshold and cope with trauma very well. The downside is when I do things like break my femur in a motorcycle accident, the ambulance man helps me off with my leathers, "They cut them when they don't need to" and then a&e keeps me waiting for a couple of hours for an x-ray, because they think it's only a bad bruise. Burns stay painful for ages, and that one was from shoulder to knee, the midwife had been knocked off her bike by a V2 rocket on the way to work and no one spotted she had shell shock. As a kid it made me really leary and daredevil, I rember being taken to hospital to be stiched up and the A&E receptionist saying "Not again Oliver", when they know you by name as you walk in ...

The only problem I have now with the eye is putting things through holes, like a screw in a drilled hole, have to do it by feel.

Do you have a higher tolerance for drugs too? Like taking percocet for pain management.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Do you have a higher tolerance for drugs too? Like taking percocet for pain management.

Not that I know of. I don't take a lot other than paracetamol for the arthritis, it's easier to get moving in the morning. Both times I broke my leg they gave me a big dose of something that knocked me out as soon as they realised I had, but it was their decision, I could have got by without. My daughter says I am immortal "We will all get old and you will still be sat in the corner, broken and raddled with disease, but still living"

 

[Growdo Baggins]

Not that I know of. I don't take a lot other than paracetamol for the arthritis, it's easier to get moving in the morning. Both times I broke my leg they gave me a big dose of something that knocked me out as soon as they realised I had, but it was their decision, I could have got by without. My daughter says I am immortal "We will all get old and you will still be sat in the corner, broken and raddled with disease, but still living"

That's really pretty funny. Prob bc you're eating all those nutrient packed veggies from your garden.