On Fri, 24 Feb 2006 08:54:28 -0800, higgledy wrote:

I would not do all that work. Without light the grass under the burm will
die, so why kill your back too? If you plan to purchase top soil be
worried about the weeds you are getting for free not the grass underneath.
What I'd do is place your top soil where you want it right on top of the
grass. Before mulching sprinlkle a product named "Snapshot" or "Preen"
this is a pre-emergent and will keep any seeds from germinating.

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As someone who installs many burmed beds per year.... remove the grass! I
have done it both ways many times and the grass always comes through. The
client will request that the grass areas not be killed/removed as a way of
saving money, but in the end they have a mess that requires some sort of
herbicide or labor to fix .

An underlayment of heavy cardboard and at least 8 inches of multch/soil
will work but make sure you over-lap the cardboard by 6+ inches so the
grass can't 'snake' it's way through.

Even with this method the grass can still get through as the cardboard
breaks down. This happened to me when I created a mound for apple trees.
Each mound was a pile of 2 yards of 3 way mix soil. I used 1, 14 foot Trex
decking board for the edging and it looked great for 5 weeks..... then the
client call and told me the cardboard failed. What happened was the
cardboard got really soft due to the watering and the grass 'punched'
through. Ended up nuking the new grass with herbicide and layed casoron to
stop it from coming back the first year.

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