While fall is basically here, it’s a great time to get started on next year’s gardens – especially if you’re starting from scratch with a lawn.
Putting lawns to the more productive use of growing food requires a bit of planning and patience, a tractor (or a friend with one) or the plain old hard work of hand tilling, depending on what your situation, budget and goals are.
To convert a lawn space into a garden bed without much effort or much money, try planning and patience, with passive techniques that let nature do most of the work for you.
One of those techniques is solarization, a way of using the sun’s radiant energy to kill grass with a clear plastic tarp. Place the tarp over an area, weigh it down well at the edges and wait.
Solarization and related passive techniques have been used this year to expand growing space at both of Presque Isle’s community gardens, at the Housing Authority on Birch Street and at the Boys & Girls Club.
So far so good on that front, said Christa Galipeau, one of the organizers at the Birch Street garden. They’re using a clear plastic tarp to prepare soil on a border of the fenced-in garden to plant wildflowers for pollinators. The wildflower patch will help better to attract and support pollinators for pollination-dependent crops like cucumbers and squash and for the garden’s young apple orchard, which will be bearing fruit in the coming years.
“The ground should be ready this fall and we will sow seeds either this fall or next spring as the plants require,” Galipeau said.
Solarization is also a way to curb problems with soil-borne pests and weeds. For instance, if your broccoli, cabbage and other brassica crops falling victim to root maggots, try solarization before planting. The technique also works well for gardeners and small farmers rotating growing space with nutrient-fixing cover crops like vetch.
Ideally, solarization is used in the height of summer, although it can still go a long way to killing grass in spring and fall and can be done prior to tractor or hand tilling to lighten the work.
Another, related method of turning grass to gardens is to smother the grass, which can be done for free if you’re open to recycling. Also known as occultation, this method deprives grass, weeds or cover crops of sunlight. It doesn’t necessarily get rid of pests, or work as fast, like solarization, although it also doesn’t dry out the soil as much.
Occultation is a budget-friendly option if you don’t want to buy or can’t find free clear tarp. Use any tarp you’ve got around the home, or help yourself to some of the lumber wrapping that’s discarded and left to recycle by the likes of Aroostook Trusses. Another benefit of these recycled tarps is that you can use them as a semi-permanent sheet mulch – leave the tarp there and cut holes into it for seeding or transplanting. It works just about as good for weed control as plastic sheet mulch for everything from strawberries to squash.
Whatever method of turning lawns into gardens you use, it should not take too much additional investment to help the soil reach a good potential – a bit of lime with compost, manure or fertilizer. Much of The County is blessed with some of if not the best soil in Maine, including underneath your own lawn.
