Gardening: Removing Grass from a Flower Bed

I had the unpleasant task this past weekend of removing grass from a flower bed. Uugh... does the word "Beating!" do it justice???

Last year, most of you knew I spent my weekends running... or recovering from running. I did a little gardening, but didn't apply "my full potential" to most projects. In particular, my front flower bed.

Each day I'd go get the paper or the mail and I'd see the grass was growing within the bushes, over the bushes, and covering most of the soil. I'd just let it go... but walk away irritated.

Saturday, the time had come to rid this pest from my view. Because I have a lot of bushes, I had to dig it out. Using poison wasn't an option. It was back-breaking to say the least. In fact, because one of my bushes is a Burberry (thorns!), I scratched up my arms real good.

I spent roughly 4 hours on my knees and stomach ripping out the roots of the grass. Some of the roots were pretty deep, too, so a shovel was needed. It was a huge project. But in the end, success. I was able to transplant some bushes to other parts of my yard, too.

So after hearing my tail of woe, my friend Mel asked, "You should blog about removing grass from a flower bed." Of course, there are a variety of scenarios and methods. Here are a few that I've seen, experienced, and even researched:

Grass in beds where plants/bushes currently reside...

The quick and dirty way (and painful!) of doing it is to get your trusty spade (or large shovel if you have the room) and dig dig dig! You need to reach deep down and grab those roots. They're white and thick and they usually form a "network" underground. It's very difficult, but very satisfying when they come out.

Another way is to cover grassy areas with layers of newspaper or even black plastic - trash bags are fine. You'll need to anchor them to the ground with either rocks or steaks. You can also cover it with dirt. Now, it may take some time. Some experts say to start it in the fall and remove it in the spring. When it's time to remove the coverings, your grass should be dead and easy to remove.

New beds where grass is currently growing...

Let's say you have an area where you have a lot of grass, but you want to create a flower bed (or vegetable garden). One method that I've used before is to dig out all of the grass with a shovel, then transplant the "cuts" of grass to another spot. Basically, mark out your bed. Then dig about 6 inches deep into manageable squares that you can cut out. You'll pull the roots with the grass. If you can transplant it, great! If not, just dump it into your trash bin.

When you're finished, you'll have an area that is lower compared to the rest of the yard. Try and dig out any remnants of grass. I've then taken newspaper and covered the entire area. After that, I covered the newspaper with my new soil. You can cut tiny holes through the newspaper as you add your plants. The newspaper will act as a barrier for at least a season, and then decompose.

However, if you have a large area, I would suggest renting a tiller from Home Depot or Lowes for half a day and tilling up that section. Then you can scrape off the tilled up grass and dirt. You can still do the newspaper thing above if needed.

What about using poison to kill the grass?

Well, I've got a good friend who I helped plant a beautiful Chinese Pistache tree in her backyard. I gave her specific instructions on how to care for it (future blog). The one thing I didn't tell her: Don't use Round-Up around it! Yep, she had grass or weeds growing within the bed around it and she sprayed the poison all over that area. Since the tree was about a year from planting, the roots were still confined to that area... Yep, she killed it.

I have another friend who decided to Round-Up his entire yard because it was all weeds. He then tilled out all of the dead grass (a few weeks later) and re-sodded his entire yard. I believe that was a successful venture.

My point is this: Use caution when using poison. Personally, I would love to use it because it makes things easier. However, I'm a minor "tree hugger" when it comes to it because I know it gets into our ground water and can impact our pets and plants/vegetables that we grow. Just use common sense.

Hope this was helpful... and thanks Mel for submitting this idea to me.