Question re building raised beds.

I am going to contour the yard a bit with raised beds and berms. When you
all do this, do you kill and/or remove the turf underneath first? The beds
will be about 10"+ high in the middle.

I thought about ripping up the turf, composting it, tilling the base soil,
then building the berm.
Thank you for your time.

Jack wrote:
Question re building raised beds.

I am going to contour the yard a bit with raised beds and berms. When you
all do this, do you kill and/or remove the turf underneath first? The
beds will be about 10"+ high in the middle.

I thought about ripping up the turf, composting it, tilling the base soil,
then building the berm.
Thank you for your time.


What I usually do is scalp the turf, and then do some deep edging around the
area. I then cover what's left with newspaper (at least 8 layers thick, and
overlapping) or corrugated cardboard. On top of that goes the new soil, and
a heavy layer of mulch. But I should also mention that I've only done this
in areas that I didn't replant for at least six months.

In the much smaller areas that I wanted to plant sooner, I removed the turf
and the soil down as far as the roots go, and replaced it all with fresh
soil. Then I stored the turf upside down while it dried-out, and later
sifted it, and composted the remaining organic material, and used the soil
as fill in an area where it didn't matter if anything grew out of it.

--
Warren H.

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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.

"higgledy" wrote in message
oups.com...
Before mulching sprinlkle a product named
"Snapshot" or "Preen" this is a pre-emergent and will keep any seeds
from germinating.


Don't recommend that stuff without first asking if edible plants will be
growing in the bed.

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.

You may want to learn how to quote better:

http://resources.ywgc.com/info/usenetposting.shtml

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.

--
http://resources.ywgc.com/info/

http://weloveteaching.com/landscape/gravel/gravel.htm
as you can see, we scalped, put down fabric and then gravel. almost no weeds came up
except on the edges. and the raised beds were easy, removed the "grass", used 2x4
treated wood attached to 2x2 spikes, lined with plastic to keep dirt off the wood and
leaking thru. has worked great. Ingrid

"Warren" wrote:
Jack wrote:
Question re building raised beds.

I am going to contour the yard a bit with raised beds and berms. When you
all do this, do you kill and/or remove the turf underneath first? The
beds will be about 10"+ high in the middle.

I thought about ripping up the turf, composting it, tilling the base soil,
then building the berm.
Thank you for your time.


What I usually do is scalp the turf, and then do some deep edging around the
area. I then cover what's left with newspaper (at least 8 layers thick, and
overlapping) or corrugated cardboard. On top of that goes the new soil, and
a heavy layer of mulch. But I should also mention that I've only done this
in areas that I didn't replant for at least six months.

In the much smaller areas that I wanted to plant sooner, I removed the turf
and the soil down as far as the roots go, and replaced it all with fresh
soil. Then I stored the turf upside down while it dried-out, and later
sifted it, and composted the remaining organic material, and used the soil
as fill in an area where it didn't matter if anything grew out of it.



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