Grass into Garden

I recently read Joan Dye Gussow's book This Organic Life, a wonderful book that gave us the push and the info we needed to finally turn our grassy front yard into garden space. The problem has been how to kill the grass without spraying it to death, and then turn it into lovely garden dirt without renting a rototiller? The answer came from Joan: cover up the lawn with something that will kill the grass and top it off with piles of compost. This preserves the structure of the soil and enriches it to boot. We decided that instead of using old carpet - Joan's method - we'd just use corrugated cardboard which wouldn't need to be removed later.

So yesterday I reminded Walt he could get some cardboard from the recycling bins at Moscow Recycling, and so he did, feeling unaccountably guilty for taking cardboard for reuse that was meant for recycling, and then realized hey, it's a great day to do this project. So he went home, spread the cardboard out over the front lawn, called the building supply for a truckload of compost, and then gathered all our neighbor's maple leaves and spread them over the cardboard just in time for the huge pile of steaming compost to be delivered.

By nightfall Walt and Reed had gotten the entire pile spread out, so the whole right side of our lawn looked like a garden just waiting to be planted. I love imagining the weedy grass underneath slowly dying and being turned into soil by the hordes of worms that we know are there. And now I get to spend the winter figuring out what to plant and where. Maybe we can do the other side of the lawn next weekend...