I needed more garden space. Really. Of course, I always say that.
My favorite exercise is turning over sod, then beating the soil out of the grass and weeds to make a new garden plot. I could be Johnny Flower-Bed, walking the country side making new gardens. The task satisfies, tires, fulfills. I’ve established quite a few garden beds in my time, almost all by hand. This weekend, I expanded the L shaped Lorelei in front of the house about a foot or so out along the length of the L, and three feet along the base.
Good-bye, grass!
At first, digging under perfectly green, nice grass that never did anything to hurt you is a shock. It feels a little wasteful and destructive. Last year, I expanded the herb garden to the right of the front door. Here’s what I wrote at the time about my wife’s reaction to it:
I think she was shocked by my demolition of a portion of the front yard. A word to the wise: clear neighborhood renewal plans with the residents. After an impromptu Town Hall meeting with interested parties I veered the border back and ended up with a graceful curve, pretty, but not as much new space as I was aiming for. I had transferred my whole herb operation to outside our apartment, (the better to easily snip fresh for cooking) and wanted room for it all. Actually, the space ended up being just about the right size.
The finished product, already hosting pansies I moved to make way for mums.
Grass can look good, but a bigger herb bed means more to use for cooking and eating, plus room for flowers tucked here and there. You can add thyme or basil to the soup, but not blades of grass from the front yard. And flowers make a much prettier centerpiece than sod.
The reason I expanded the Lorelei this weekend is to make room for beans and cucumbers. I’m planting beans here because bean beetles are a serious problem at Smith, and Jones is too small to make planting them worth a hill of … well, you know what I mean. And cucumbers are vegetables that one day are cute youngsters full of promise, then before you know it they’re middle-aged geezers, overripe and seedy. I want to be able to pick them exactly when they’re just right.
Ready for the hard part: separating grass from soil
There’s a way to dig very deeply and bury the sod, grass down, under about a foot of garden. It involves digging a narrow trench, then digging a second next to it and turning that sod upside-down into the first. The decomposing grass will add fertility to the soil. I just removed the grass, tough work that would help anyone express some unresolved anger. You plunge your hand into the pile of overturned sod, pull out a big hunk of grass, then Whap! Whap! Whap! it on a brick or the garden fork until most of the soil is off, again and again until you’re left with a crumbly, soft mound of soil.
The finished product
I enriched the new beds with rotted leaf mulch and horse manure. I didn’t want to wait for grass, a foot down, to decompose. Then the final part of the job, I lined up bricks to make a neat edge. Neat!
Actually, I support digging under lawns for other reasons besides my love of gardens. Grass, though beautiful when well-tended, is a demanding plant that needs lots of fertilizer and water. Waterways suffer (the Chesapeake Bay in my own neighborhood) from the run-off of nitrogen-based fertilizers applied to acres and acres of lawns and golf courses. Too much of that overwhelms the water’s systems and causes serious problems. Also, water is a precious resource for our use, yes, but also to conserve. And finally, many older gas lawn mowers pollute, spewing noxious gases into the air.
The bottom line: I wanted to plant more things so I enlarged my bed. A back-breaking (oh, was I sore on Monday!) but completely satisfying task.
