Thanks so much for the response above. Really appreciate you going into detail to help me out. Can you or anyone speak to compacting the soil? Is that just for pathways do I need to do it?

I'm not sure what you mean by "compacting the soil". Why do you think you need to do that?

Sometimes, if you have a loose soily-soil (like in the midwest), if you rototill large areas and intend to plant lawn, you need to roll it. This sort of tamps it down so you don't sink into the tilled soil. But this is only FIRMING it, not actually compacting it. You use a roller, which used to be just a big cement "wheel" with a handle so you could pull it across the area to be tamped down.

If that is the sort of thing you mean, it really depends on what type of soil you have and how deeply it has been tilled. Here we have very sandy loose crumbly soil and it would need very minimal "rolling". In the midwest, from which I hail, a bit firmer rolling of deeply tilled ground might be called for.

But in no case should it actually be "compacted".

Again, I would check with your extension agency for advice about your particular situation.

Step 1. Kill grass. I just turn off the sprinklers. I plan on undertaking this project in december. i feel like it will be adequate time to starve the grass out.

Uh .... no. Bermuda grass can survive that long with no water and will come back from the roots wherever it gets water. It's an African native accustoimed to going 6 months between rainy seasons.

Step one ... deliberately KILL the grass with glyphosate. Water it well, get it growing good and spray it. Let it die back, then mow short, water well let it grow up and kill the regrowth. Repeat until you do not get regrowth.

SKIP the tilling .... you should not need to do this. Just plant through the dead grass.

If you are going to use decomposed granite for the main ground cover, you will need to get rid of the dead turf. Slicing it off (there's a special machine for it) will do, but make sure the bermuda is DEAD.

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Plan your landscape around your existing sprinkler stations ... convert them to drip irrigation, one run at a time.

Firstly - do you even HAVE Bermuda grass?

Secondly - That's a lot of roundup. You'll have to apply it continuously for a month at least (reapply every 2 or 3 days). And it needs to be in an active growth phase to be effective.

Thirdly - you'll have to be super-careful about drift when applying that much roundup. It can and will drift into your neighbor's yards and kill or damage their plants. If there is anything other than grass planted in your yard, those plants will be endangered as well.

Here are several ways to kill off Bermuda grass (if that's what you have) - 2.5 of which involve smothering it (I count the one that says "scrape it off and then put down heavy-duty weed barrier" as 0.5 of a smothering method, LOL!)

PS - do NOT skip the tilling in any area where you plan to plant something - especially if you're going to go for living ground cover. Lawns are nearly always heavily compacted. In most housing developments, you can see where the sod layer ends and the compacted substrate begins even 20 years after the place has been sodded.

You need good drainage even if you are getting rid of the lawn because soil that is compacted like that just causes water to run off rather than soaking in to where it is needed - which means higher watering bills for lawns, but also for anything you plant later as well.

Here is a link that might be useful: Effective ways to remove Bermuda grass

This post was edited by zensojourner on Sun, Sep 14, 14 at 20:02

Secondly - That's a lot of roundup. You'll have to apply it continuously for a month at least (reapply every 2 or 3 days). And it needs to be in an active growth phase to be effective.

No you don't ... you get the grass growing well, spray thoroughly with glyphosate, give it a week to die, mow it short, water well and and wait a couple of weeks so the regrowth is a few inches high ... then you spray again. It takes 3 or 4 applications and mowings spread over a couple of months during the growing season.

"Roundup" (the brand name stuff) has more than just glyphosate in it, so I stopped using it.

Thirdly - you'll have to be super-careful about drift when applying that much roundup. It can and will drift into your neighbor's yards and kill or damage their plants. If there is anything other than grass planted in your yard, those plants will be endangered as well.

Good grief, have you never read the label of an herbicide?

If it's windy, you don't spray. Keep the spray head close to the ground when spraying grass. That's all it takes to keep neighborhood free of glyphosate. I use it a lot and the neighbors' landscaping is amazingly still alive.

To protect desirable plants, I drop a paper cup, paper bag or cardboard box over them as a shield, spray the weeds and remove the shield after the spray has dried. Haven't killed anything yet. Some people use those big painting shields

Here's the problem with trying to kill Bermuda grass with Roundup - or ANY of it's ilk. Brand name really does not matter, glyphosate is glyphosate is glyphosate.

Bermuda grass spreads by stolons. Roundup and all its kin are contact herbicides. Only a small amount of the poison ends up in the root system. Because of this, it may appear that you have killed off all the Bermuda grass when in fact you've just killed whatever currently has its head stuck above the ground. In a few days, the stolons will put forth new grass.

Hence, the need for repeated sprays over a long period of time.

Anybody who has ever tried to kill trumpet vine with Roundup (or any of its ilk) soon finds out that the roots are left virtually untouched.

It doesn't have to be "windy" to get drift. And I can't see anyone running around to their neighbor's putting paper cups over plants, or draping shrubbery with plastic and what not.

If you use it "a lot" I can only imagine that its not very effective. Or at least you're not using it very effectively. What the heck are you using it for, that you need to use it "a lot"? Clearly its not the best solution for your problem if you keep having to reapply it in any quantity.

Regardless, killing a lawn with roundup (OR ANY OF ITS ILK) is no quicker or easier than any other method, and you still have all that dead sod to dig up.

I would suggest the OP consult his local extension agency for more meaningful advice for his specific situation. Who knows, maybe they'll tell him to use Roundup too. But I doubt it. Not much of anybody tries to use it that way anymore because it is such a pain.

Also, glyphosate itself turns out not to be nearly as safe as Monsanto has claimed up to now. The "other stuff" in Roundup (supposedly inert ingredients) are also found in Roundup knockoffs - but even if you could get plain glyphosate, it is a health risk. So you may want to rethink using it "a lot".

Laying down cardboard and waiting over winter is probably the easiest method to kill the grass, though not the quickest. It's also the cheapest because you can get as much cardboard as you want for free from local stores - often already flattened. Cover it up with cheap bark mulch and you can pretty much just till the whole thing over in the spring. And in a large municipality, you may even be able to get ground up trees and leaves from the city for free or very low cost.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rodaly Institute article on Roundup/Glyphosate

Thanks for the responses and advice guys. I didn't know what an extension agency was. But now I figured it out and I'll look it up. I don't know what type of grass I have I'll figure that out. But regardless there's no way I'd spray that much round up.

By compacting I mean pounding the ground with a flat surface. But it sounds like that'll be bad for drainage I think people only really do it for pathways etc so they stay even.

I'm reluctant to lay down cardboard or plastic just because I feel bad for my neighbors having such a mess outside. But it sounds like they might just have to deal.
If I till up the grass and shovel out the sod, is regrowth of the grass going to be a big issue since I'd be tearing out the roots anyways?

My suggestion would be rent a sod cutter---removing rolls of sod removes potential roots that might resprout after applying roundup ---so skip the roundup (glysophate) and remove sod--then apply landscape fabric in areas where plants will not be planted--do any hardscaping and irrigation installation, plant and then apply granite

Andrew ... If I till up the grass and shovel out the sod, is regrowth of the grass going to be a big issue since I'd be tearing out the roots anyways?

It depends on the kind of grass. Those that spread by underground rhizomes (Bermuda and a few others) are likely to regrow from chunks of rhizomes. And if you don't patrol the area and remove all the survivors for a couple of growing seasons, they will re-establish. The rhizomes are the drought and overgrazing survival strategy - despite the name, Bermuda grass is an African savannah grass and has to deal with 6 months of no rain and being grazed by bazillions of migrating wildebeests and gnus.

Making the switch to Buffalo Grass, we used a sod-cutter to remove the lawn, then tilled in compost and fertilizers and raked out grass roots and rhizomes before plugging the buffalo grass in ... and still had regrowth. We should have spent a lot more time - perhaps all summer - on getting the Bermuda killed off.

I confess my errors here:
http://lazygardens.blogspot.com/2009/08/watching-grass-grow-week-20-confessing.html

Solarizing deeply enough to kill Bermuda's rhizomes will damage the surface roots of any trees and shrubs in that area, possible stunting or killing the greenery. The rhizomes are usually in the top 6 inches of soil, as are the tree and shrub's feeder roots. I had a client who refused to use "chemicals" like I advised and solarized around her bushes instead ... she killed quite a few by cooking the roots.

My approach - leaving the dead grass to decompose under the new planting - creates open channels where the decomposed roots used to be. Lazy aerating. :) I think of it as a cover crop.

zensojourner - Where do you live that Bermuda grass is so easy to kill?

I use a lot of glyphosate because I clear out weed-infested landscapes and Bermuda lawns for a living/hobby, converting them to xeriscapes and lower maintenance landscapes. In the dusty desert SW, wind-blown weed seeds are ubiquitous and omnipresent and we have three weed-sprouting seasons (spring, monsoon and early winter) to deal with. Some of the seeds can persist in the soil for 10+ years and then sprout.

Roundup and all its kin are contact herbicides. You are incorrect. Glyphosate is a systemic herbicide, not a contact herbicide. It translocates to the roots and kills the plant from the roots up. The problem with Bermuda is that it has such a huge underground component it's hard to get it all in the first application. You can improve the kill by having several inches of lush growth to spray, but in most of its range it takes two or more applications.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate

Brand name really does not matter, glyphosate is glyphosate is glyphosate. You have been misinformed. The current brand-name "Roundup" added a knock-down contact herbicide to the formula (read the label) because homeowners are impatient to see weeds shrivel ... it's not necessary. So I use the generic single herbicide.

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And about that Rodale study: "Researchers tested four combinations of Roundup on cultured human cells" and blah,blah,blah ....

Cell cultures are fragile. You can kill or damage them by adding almost anything that disrupts their unprotected cell membranes. Try adding 20% acetic acid, the commonly used "organic" herbicide and see how fast they die. Even baking soda can kill them or damage them.

Here is a link that might be useful: Bermuda images

I'm about 2/3 of the way through replacing our lawn in conjunction with the city's turf replacement rebate program and this is what I recommend based on this recent experience:

1. check for rebate programs in your area (our city will rebate $2 a square foot for every foot of grass removed as long as I use water permeable landscape cloth and replant 25% of the area with low water plants. They came out and inspected, I have 90 days to complete the project and turn in the paper work and they will come back out and approve it- the check will be issued in 6-8 weeks once approved.)

2. water the heck out of your lawn and wait a few days

3. use a sod cutter. Do yourself a HUGE favor and use a sod cutter!!!!! I'm a 5'6" tall woman and removed the entire lawn myself in 2 days with a sod cutter so if I can do it almost anyone in good health should be able to do it. A cheap serrated bread knife is a great tool to cut the strips of sod into manageable pieces (sod is heavy!) Tilling instead would just create a ton of work to remove the grass roots. A sod cutter is your new best friend. If you need to till areas do it after removing the sod.

4. Keep watering and now use Round Up to spray any grass that pops up. Repeat this as many times as you can.

Then do your landscape cloth, whatever you are going to use to cover, a drip system if you're going to use one, etc. and then plant and enjoy not mowing the lawn any more. :)