I would do the layer method with lots newspapers. Keep them soaked and it will smother out all the grass and weeds. I'm doing something similar in my beds right now.

You can look up lasagne gardening, and it was recently in Mother Earth News.

The biggest tip is don't over-extend yourself! Don't plan too big or you'll be overwhelmed. I know, I'm trying to keep mine manageable right now, too!

Shelly

I've nothing more to add but wanted to say hi and welcome! My youngest is 11 months old now so we'll have to compare notes on how much dirt and how many bugs they eat this summer. ;-)

Diane

Shelly, thanks so much for the link to Mother Earth. I think I may try the lasagna method and see what kind of success I have. I cringe just imagining trying to get up all the grass and weeds already established. Might as well put them to some good use, eh? LOL.

Diane, thank you for the welcome! We will definitely have to compare notes about the kiddos this summer. I'm almost certain that my little man will be walking by then, so I am SURE he will be into EVERYTHING, LOL.

Dawn, I just have to say that you have been so great and generous with your expertise! I am always eager to collect and put others' experienced knowledge to use, especially when they are so kind and free in sharing it! :) No, the little ones don't stay small long! I can't believe he is already up and about (and into everything!), seems like just yesterday we brought him home! I am fortunate enough to have a DH who equally shares the responsibility in caring for him when he isn't working. DH is always more than happy to keep DS entertained while I do whatever I need/want to do (yardwork, housework, internet surfing, etc) without complaining. And if DS takes a nap, DH always comes and helps me with whatever I'm doing. (I'm blessed, I know LOL)

To answer your questions, I am starting with grass/weeds and making it into something more, totally from scratch. However, I went and dug about 6 inches down in several spots for my planned beds and was quite surprised to find fairly dark, rich-looking soil beneath the grass and all. It isn't fluffy, by any means, but it isn't rocky or clay or sandy or any horror that I was half-expecting. The only place the soil isn't great is the bed I am planning underneath our tree out front. I am not sure about the kind of grass we have, but it sends out "ropes" and grows ANYWHERE there is a bit of dirt (in between cracks in driveway and sidewalk) I hope that helps you identify it b/c I haven't a clue, LOL.

Thank you all so much for your advice and welcomes, I am really enjoying this forum and all the tips it has to offer! I am looking forward to becoming a part of the community, it's so nice to finally find one in our new home. Being a stay-at-home momma has been lonely this first year, and I miss having companionship with people I have something in common with :)

~*Natasha*~

Natasha,

It sounds like the wicked, evil bermuda grass, which does indeed spread by runners and go everywhere. Look at the linked photo below and see if it your grass resembles it.

Finding dark rich soil that is not excessively high in clay or rock is great, and so is the fact that you don't have pure sand.....because root knot nematodes can be a huge problem in sandy soil in our climate.

What kind of bed is going under the tree in front, and do you know what kind of tree it is? There's a good chance the ground out front might be better than you think. Often, front lawns get walked on a lot (and sometimes driven on or parked on) and the ground becomes compacted and hard, but that's easy to correct by tilling up the soil and adding organic matter (compost, pine bark fines, humus, manure, soil conditioner (usually a combination of humus and fine bark), etc. to improve the tilth of the soil.

Oh, and if you have bermuda, the only easy solution is to pack up and move to Alaska where it is (I hope!) too cold for bermuda to survive. Other than that, you'll have to spend the rest of your gardening life fighting the bermuda....and it is a fight that you can more or less win, but that's not to say it will be easy. I hate bermuda grass.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Images of the evil invader, bermuda grass

Whatever you do, pay attention to Dawn's advice and DON'T rototill bermuda grass. If it is bermuda, the best bet is to cut the turf and lift it out and throw it away--or give it to someone who wants it in their lawn. If you till it, every segment will root and grow. You can kill it with Roundup but it takes more than one application and it has to be done while the stuff is actively growing. You would have to devote one growing season just to spraying and respraying.

If you don't have the time or energy to get every last sprig of root out of your bed area, you might be ahead to garden in containers for one summer while you get rid of it. But if you have any in your yard at all, it will crawl back toward your beds. Bermudagrass really IS evil.

Good luck with it.

Another way to get out bermuda is to smother it with black plastic for a growing season. But again, that would mean gardening in containers while you killed it. It is very very difficult to mulch it out as I have seen it come through several layers of newspaper and 3-4" of mulch.

Dawn--ugh, YES! It is indeed the evil bermuda grass. We have primarily that and some other sort of grass, bummer. I am pleased with the quality of soil that is underneath; I was expecting much worse. In N.TX where I grew up, the soil is completely different. I have a gigantic sycamore tree out front, which I love (except for the fruit balls, hate stepping on those!) and it is all nekkid dirt under the shade canopy. I am planning a shade garden of colocasia and caladium bulbs, just to add a little greenery and color to the front yard. The soil underneath it is very compact and hard, but I don't think anyone ever thought to plant anything there before. At least it doesn't appear so. I wonder if spreading the ton of cedar needles that I just found under my leaves on the fence would help some, along with tilling. It'll have to be by hand b/c I have exposed roots, but that's okay. So, tell me what your thoughts are on all of that. LOL. (Oh, also, if it matters, I am planning a small bed of mixed gladiolus and Stella D'Oro daylilies for the hummingbirds and butterflies out front, just separately from the shade bed)

Mulberry--sounds like you've had your fair share of battles with the bermuda! :) Thanks for the advice, I am still thinking I may try the layers of papers but over a layer of cardboard. Mulch is sounding more and more like it is going to be my best friend this summer. And if the grass comes up despite my best efforts, I guess I will just have to spend some time on my knees (which never hurt anybody, LOL) and pull it out. Weeding has always been a sort of meditative exercise for me once I get in the groove of it. And it's much more relaxing this year knowing that my reward when I finish is jumping in the pool to cool off! :)

One more tip. Natasha, if you can get an area fairly well worked up, you can plant a good vigorous corn, which will greatly weaken (dare I say "start to eliminate") Bermuda. Once the corn is above 2' it will outgrow Bermuda and very soon, shade it out. Bermuda REALLY doesn't like shade.

It's really easy to work up more space than one can maintain, once summer's heat strikes, and the Bermuda goes crazy. I've been so busy that I only really started garden clean up yesterday. Three days ago, we had a six year old visitor, who went with me, to the garden, to dig some Jerusalem artichokes. She looked around, surveying my garden, and then pronounced, "This is a good place to START a garden!" That just tells you how the stuff can regain lost territory!

George
Tahlequah, OK

Faerybutterflye,

Please pay careful attention to Dorothy's words. Placing layers of cardboard and newspaper and mulch on top of bermuda grass will not eliminate it. In fact, as the newspaper and cardboard decompose (which occurs VERY quickly in a rainy spring), they will in fact turn into compost and FEED the bermuda grass which then will grow up through the cardboard, newspaper and mulch. I cannot emphasize strongly enough that it is exceptionally hard to build lasagna beds on top of bermuda sod in our climate especially if the bermuda roots are in hard, compacted clay-ey or rocky soil.

In very hard clay soil, or soil dense with rocks, it is hard to get the bermuda roots out....I've been working on it for 11 years now with success only in limited areas. I've had much more luck with shading it out and will use George's thickly-planted corn method on new ground I'm breaking this year for a larger vegetable garden.

If your soil is not too dense or rocky for a sod cutter, that's the best way to remove bermuda sod...rent a sod cutter, take it out and get it removed completely and totally from your property.

If you leave a 1/4" piece of bermuda stolon every square yard, the bermuda grass will spread and take back your beds in a matter of weeks. I have heard Neil Sperry tell people that for many years (oops, decades!) now on his gardening show and folks just never seem to get it. Bermuda comes back and comes back and comes back.

Years ago my brother thought he'd eliminate bermuda grass from his future flower beds around his new house. He rototiled, raked out the large pieces of bermuda, added manure to the soil, put down very thick and heavy black plastic (6 mm), cut holes, planted his shrubs and vines, and put a heavy layer of white rock on top of the black plastic. The grass sprouted in every hole where he'd planted and he had to dig it out by hand repeatedly. Five years later he declared the rocks and plastic a failure. He shoveled up all the rocks, lifted the black plastic and found very thick and sturdy bermuda stolons all over the place under that black plastic. He had to either dig it out by hand--very difficult in his thick caliche-clay/white limestone soil near Granbury,Texas, or let the bermuda reclaim the area. He gave up and let the bermuda win. So, my point is that if bermuda can survive for 5 years under heavy black plastic, you aren't going to smother it out with cardboard and paper and mulch. IF you get rid of every possible bit of the bermuda by digging it out or removing it with a sodcutter, you add organic matter to the soil, you plant, and then you put down cardboard and paper around the new plants and then add 3 or 4" of mulch, then you'll be able to mostly prevent the bermuda from infiltrating from grassy areas outside the bed and from stolon pieces you missed, but it will take constant vigilance.

I'm not telling you all this to frighten you, but just to make you understand that we've been through this many times with many people. Lasagna gardening is great, and it works well with clumping grasses but not with running grasses like bermuda and St. Augustine grass in our climate.

Every year, I watch people here in my county (LOL, and with some of them they do it year after year after year as if they seemingly learn NOTHING from their repeated experience) rototill up a nice big patch of bermuda grass, rake out the large pieces of grass and stolons, plant veggies and water it well. Four to six weeks later they have a garden full of young veggie plants with bermuda grass already reappearing "here and there". By the time their garden is 8 to 12 weeks old, there is more bermuda than veggies. By the time the garden is 4 months old both bermuda grass and Johnson grass have "taken it back", the would-be gardeners have abandoned it, and another unsuccessful veggie harvest of little to no veggies and lots of grass has ruint someone's hopes. I watch this happen year in and year out and don't understand why they fail to figure out that they have to get ALL the grass out first and then work to KEEP it out if they want to grow a garden.

So, with your flower beds and veggie beds, get all the bermuda out first, then remain vigilant on a daily, or at least a weekly basis, to keep it out. That is the ONLY way to grow anything here in an area that formerly was bermuda grass. If you go away on vacation for a couple of weeks, you'll likely come back and find the bermuda is winning the war. There is nothing harder in southern OK than fighting the bermuda grass and winning. Since our main rainy months here are April, May and June, the mud and the rapid regrowth of grass stolons/runners make bermuda grass removal difficult during that time frame, and by the time the rainy season is over, the bermuda is stronger than ever. Last year's very heavy spring rains left many gardens here in Love County with grasses and weeds 6' tall by June. If you can't get into the garden to keep the stuff out, it wins. I weed and dig out grass every single day in the spring and still struggle to keep the bermuda grass and Johnson grass out of my veggie and flower gardens. Like George, I find it 'infiltrates' and spreads into places where I had removed it.....that usually happens when I am struggling just to keep up with the veggie harvest from mid-summer on because when the veggie are ready you have to harvest them, and then cook and eat what you can and spend the rest of your time dehydrating, canning, freezing, pickling and jellying the rest. That's when my bermuda grass starts marching back into the garden....it sneaks under the fence and starts spreading through the mulch when I'm spending all those long days in the kitchen putting food by for the non-gardening season.

My best success with removing bermuda has been in areas where we have planted oodles and oodles of trees and shrubs. As they grow and get larger, they shade it out (hooray!) and then I can plant shade-loving ground covers and perennials. Unfortunately, trees grow slowly so after 11 years here, I'm just starting to see significant shading out of bermuda.

I had black gumbo clay in Fort Worth and I only thought it was hard to garden in it. I've give my left arm to have that black gumbo now because the dense red Oklahoma clay I have now is 1,000 times worse. I miss my St. Augustine grass too.

To prepare for your bermuda battles, buy one of those little garden kneeling pads in the spring when they show up in stores. I have three of them, all well-used. Buy a good strong sturdy trowel. With bermuda grass, you don't really pull it out....pulling it out only removes the uppermost part of it and the underground part regrows quickly. You have to dig it out, and be sure you put it into trash bags and dispose of it properly. NEVER put bermuda grass or Johnson grass on the compost pile because if you do, you won't have a compost pile but you will have a lovely new bermuda and Johnson grass garden.

We're not trying to scare you....but George, Dorothy and I all have fought and fought and fought bermuda and Johnson grass and we know exactly how hard it is to win each battle with it.

For your flower bed under the tree, spread everything you can on the ground under the tree.....those cedar needles, grass clippings, old hay or straw, fine bark mulch, compost, etc. It is even better if you can work those into the soil, but that is hard with compacted soil and tree roots. You can improve the soil from the surface down because the mulch feeds the soil and plants as it decomposes and the earthworms and other critters carry the decomposing matter down into the soil, but it takes years, not months or weeks.

Since last year was your first year, I have to warn you that last year's weather was not typical....we tend to have many more dry drought-type years and not many wet, rainy years. For example, here in Love County, we had anout 53" of rain here at our house (including 12.84" of rain in one day in April) in 2009. That is NOT normal. In 2008, we had 23" of rain, which was below-average but much more typical of what we have here most years.

I'm going to find and link the Carter County climate page from the Oklahoma Climatological Society for you below. Click on the link to read the data in it and you'll learn a lot about Carter County's climate, including average rainfall, snowfall, average last frost dates in spring, average first freeze dates in fall, etc. Remember, though, that they give 30-year averages and I have found in our 11 years here that we tend to have spring freezes far beyond the 'average' dates.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Carter County Climate Pages

A word about Sycamore trees. You will notice that in the wild, they tend to grow along streams. That is an indication that they are moisture hogs. And those large leaves cast very dense shade. You may be successful building a bed under one, but it will take a lot of water and it may be TOO shady. If I had a large Sycamore tree, I think I would pave an area under it, or gravel it, put a nice bench or two and set several large pots around. I say that because I would not waste water on a Sycamore tree.