Lawn to Edible Garden: creating the beds for planting

Creating the garden beds for planting

In order to transform our lawn into an edible landscape, we have to create garden beds where we have had grass. The hard way to do that is to dig up the grass by hand with a shovel or to use a rototiller. There is an easier way, however, using inexpensive and easily accessible materials: cardboard, old carpet, wood chips, and horse manure.

Our first step in creating garden beds is to go on a scavenger hunt around the village in search of large sheets of cardboard and old carpet. We bought a used pick-up truck for hauling firewood and gathering materials, so it is easy for us to drive around town with the pick-up scouting for our FREE materials that people have put at the curb. We usually do this on trash night and it's actually a fun routine that we often do as a family.


Once in awhile we hit the motherlode of cardboard and we really feel happy when that happens. I know that weird things make us happy, but when you can envision a large garden bed coming together easily because of your big pile of cardboard it's really quite satisfying! We pile it all into the truck and drive home, ready to work. The back of our house looked messy when we first started gathering these materials - in fact it was a little hillbilly-ish and a bit embarrassing, but we pressed on...





When we find carpet it is, of course, carpet that people are throwing out. Once when our neighbor saw us in her driveway piling her old, dirty carpet into our pick-up, she came out with a concerned look on her face and told us that we probably didn't want her carpet because it was full of cat pee! We explained what we were using it for - and that the cat pee was not a problem - and, although she was still a bit puzzled, she let us take the carpet. Now she stops often as she is walking her dog to see how our garden is coming along.


In addition to gathering carpet and cardboard, we also have to accumulate horse manure and wood chips - which is another story in itself and deserves to be told at a later time. Suffice it to say that we have huge piles of manure and wood chips in our FRONT yard and we are fortunate to live in a garden conscious neighborhood!


In order to create a bed for planting, we put the cardboard down where we want to develop the bed in order to kill the grass. We cut the carpet into strips the width of the pathways we want to have because we don't want weeds to grow on our pathways and the carpet will not only kill the grass, but it probably won't disintegrate for another 300,000 years or so. It's nice that we can use it for something useful since carpet full of cat pee isn't a sought after commodity.


Once we put the cardboard down and create pathways with the carpet, we pile manure on top of the cardboard and spread it out. Then we put wood chips on the pathways and - voila - we have a new garden bed!





Sometimes we begin planting right away, and sometimes we prepare the bed in the fall, pile leaves or straw over it so it can compost over the winter, and then plant that bed in the spring. Last summer I created a bed and planted zucchini in it the same day. We have such an abundance of manure that I can pile it on 6-8 inches deep. (I know how that sounds...6 inches deep in sh_t, but you know, we do what we gotta do - and it's all good!) I made hills about 15 inches high to plant the zucchini in so it had room for its roots. The zucchini was very happy and provided us with an abundance of tasty food into the fall.


I like the idea that we are recycling materials - carpet, cardboard, wood chips from fallen trees and yard scraps, and horse manure. It is simple and we can do it ourselves without spending a lot of money. We drive around our small village and talk to our neighbors to collect our materials rather than driving to Lowe's or Home Depot and spending money on materials that come from who-knows-where. The manure we use comes from a local horse farm and is not wrapped in plastic; the wood chips come from the local tree guy who has just used his chipper to chop up the neighbor's tree; the cardboard and carpet come from recycling bins all over the village. By using these materials we have developed relationships with a whole network of people that we would otherwise not know. The change in our lifestyle is not only about gardening, but also about relating to our friends and neighbors, using local materials, and doing our own labor. It is quietly radical on so many levels...