I'd put beds on top and fill with compost, leafmold, vermiculite, maybe some soil if I could be sure it was good.

I can tell you that tilling lawn is a lot of work. Even with a good tiller sod can be tough stuff. If you are going to till it, I would say do it now as best you can, then take another more serious crack at it in the spring.

Hi Marcia,

Last fall I did the same thing you are planning. I did it the lazy way though.

I put the raised bed frames right on the lawn, laid newspaper several layers thick down on top of the grass (no tilling!) and filled the beds with a mix of peat moss, sheep manure and compost. Some of the compost was only partially finished. Then in the spring I planted.

It wasn't exactly a lasagne garden because the contents were already composted, or at least partly composted. Even in the fall, that would be suitable for planting garlic if you wanted to use it right away.

The best part is that I dug down this year and hit the original soil. Not a blade of grass to be seen. It looks like the grass and newspaper composted to nothing over the course of this year. As a bonus, the original soil was very soft to dig through, as opposed to the hard-packed mess I was faced with last year.

I'd recommend doing it this way. So easy.

Rake up your leaves, stop by Starbucks for some free used coffee grounds, grab the sunday paper and in a short while you can have the makings of an incredible garden.

Using lasagna gardening is the easiest way to create a new garden from a lawn. It doesn't require special tools, nearly eliminates weeds in the garden, builds excellent soil, minimizes watering, etc.

I made a new lasagna bed this past spring and planted potatoes in the layers. I harvested potatoes by hand a while ago and found all the leaves and coffee grounds gone. They were replaced by a 6-inch layer of worm-castings. I watered the potatoes once all summer, when I put them in.

Cheers,
Kyle

Hey marcia,
Ill be the odd man out and say that I would personally rototill the lawn. I would then take the rototilled law and shovel it into piles where I where I want my raised beds to be...thereby sinking or lowering the areas around the raised beds. This sucken area around the raised beds can then be filled with wood chips or gravel or whatever you want the paths to be...and they will still be the level of the original lawn or street.
After you have piled where you want your raised beds to be...then I would lasagna on top of that with UCG, leaves, kitchen waste, etc. This way you can bring your raised beds up to 2-3 feet so there will not be too much back bending while gardening there.
And yes, rototilling part of your front lawn will take an hour or two or more, but at least you can have paths that are not raised several inches above your current level.

PS. I tore out my entire front lawn this way this summer. My lawn has been replaced with paths and raised beds for trees, bulbs, shrubs, etc. Who likes to water and mow a green carpet?

There is no need to till, just put down some newspaper and cover that with shredded leaves and any other organic matter you can get. The newspaper will, by cutting off access to light, kill any grass and other plants growing there and next spring that will be ready to plant in.

g'day marcia,

no need for any mechanical work ie.,. tilling, see our pic's and story of how we do our gardens where lawn once grew.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page

Not only is there no need to till, I can give you several thousand words on why you don't want to till.

If you want the beds raised, start from the current level. If you want them at the current level and you want something instantly, the tool to use is a tractor with a box blade to scrape the surface plantings off. If you want it at the current level and have more time than money, mulch heavily now (or lasagna) for spring. Anything you can do that is an organic fertilizer (like ground grains, not like compost) will help tremendously.

I wouldn't till it, you may end up with hundreds of little clumps of grass later on. I use the newspaper covered with all kinds of oganic matter method myself. Has worked very well for me.

tj

And I would add that after you've smothered the lawn with newspaper, and covered that with compost and other materials, you could plant something like oats - even a little bit of green manure cover over winter is better than bare soil. Failing the green manure, if you have access to eelgrass on the coast you could cover the new bed with that.

On your point of wanting to remove all the grass between the beds...why? I left enough room between my beds for my mower. No maintence problem at all.Maybe you don't have the space to do this. If I had removed the grass I would have dirt, mud, etc. that I would have to cover with some kind of material like stones, etc. More work. The lawn looks very nice between the beds.

for between the beds just continue the newspaper layer and then you can cover that with biscuits of hay, wood chip, stones, shavings, sawdust whatever you want to walk?

len

I had originally left the grass right up to the sides of my beds. I found it difficult to mow right up to the edge of the beds and the mower/weed whacker tended to throw weed/grass seeds into the beds. I now extend the paper/cardboard beyond the beds and cover with wood chips (I have a free supply of wood chips.) If your lawn is nice and you are going to the extra $$ of hard sides/frames for your raised beds then it might not be that big a deal to mow/edge around and in between your beds. I would say, make sure your paper/cardboard layer is good and thick around that edging as a little gap there and pulling the grass that grows up next to your edging is a challenge. I would make sure the paper/cardboard went all the way under the edging and perhaps a couple inches past.