I just moved into the house. It's your typical grass: Whatever they sell at
the local home centers as "the right mix for Rochester NY". Considering the
previous owners, I'm sure they didn't go looking for anything different than
that.

I was hoping to do this work over the next couple of weeks so I could work
in a few billion pounds of manure & peat moss, and have it nice & settled in
April.

"Tex John" wrote in message
...
Can you wait until Spring?

And what kind of grass? If it is St Augustine, this will work. If it is
Bermuda, it won't.

I'd weed-eat it down to the dirt, wet it, cover it with 6-8 sheets of
newspaper, cover THAT with 1-2 feet of dead leaves (ergo, do it when the
leaves fall) and keep those moistened. In Spring, St Augustine would be
dead, you'd have an inch of compost between the newspapers and the bottom
leaves, and THEN till it.

Worked for me a few years ago. If you are organic enough to have worms,
most
of that paper will be gone by Spring...done (vermi)composted.

hth,
John


"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...
Many years ago, when I was digging my first vegetable garden, I rented a
rototiller to remove the lawn and ended up regretting it. The machine
inverted clumps of grass which still had to be overturned by hand in
order
shake off the useful soil. If (in a fantasy world), it had NEATLY
overturned
them exactly 180 degrees so the grass simply died, that would've been
great,
but it was a fairly random mess. I ended up finishing the thing by hand,
which wasn't TOO awful, since I'd just bought a really nice spade &
fork.

At my new house, I'm about to create another vegetable garden. Again, I
have
excellent tools, but I'm wondering about renting a tiller, since I'm
dealing
with a 20x40 foot area. However, I'd like to avoid the same mess. Was
the
previous fiasco due to the type of tiller, the way I used it, the
position
of the moon, or what? Combination of all factors?