Smothering Grass With Cardboard To Rebuild Foundation Bed - April 2024

Last Fall, when I was digging up/out the (extended) IB2DWs bed for the small conifer garden along the property line, I turned to a mix of grass-removal techniques.  The whole area was turf, so I did three things:  Dug it out, smothered it/covered it up and flipped it over (and smothered it).   For the material that I excavated, I brought most of it over to the southside of the house and used it to fill in the little gully/swale on the side of the house.  And, I tucked in a bunch of it (flipped over) along the side of the porch where I'd seen some erosion over the years.  On this side of the house, we have just ONE downspout that handles a big portion of the roof and when it gets clogged up, that gutter 'tops'.  That's one source of the erosion.  The other is the downspout outlet.  Whatever *does* get down the downspout, comes out one of those surface drains.   

That 'flipped' turf was a way to raise the ground-level here.  And, like a bunch of the areas that I worked last Fall, I left it alone all Winter.  As expected, with the roots exposed, the grass didn't come back (very much), but it didn't look tidy.  I'm going to do a full yard mulch/edge in the coming weeks, but I wanted to hit up some spots that needed some extra attention first - including this little area.  

I'm not planning on planting anything in this bed for this season, so I opted to use the "Lasagna Method" of smothering the remaining grass with cardboard, wetting it down, then applying a THICK layer of hardwood fine mulch on top.  I mentioned this before, but I bought about a dozen bags of the not-so-nice Home Depot bagged mulch for jobs like this one.  When I say "not so nice", I mean it isn't double/triple ground and not made up of bark.  (I've read/watched videos about this bagged mulch and some suspect it is a byproduct of the lumber industry and just ground up and dyed remnants vs....reusing material collected in the wild (like downed/chipped trees).  

Below are a series of photos showing the progression.  There are a couple of larger flagstone pieces that sit in this bed that I peeled off.  Then, I laid out some cardboard, got it wet and topped with with that HD mulch.  To the right of this little bed, you can see my "Indiana Street" Iris.  And just further to the right (out of the shot) are a pair of Hydrangeas that I pruned (chop and drop-style) earlier this Spring.

In that photo above, the color and change are significant.  Quite an improvement, I'd say.  I'll get the rest of bed a proper edge and some mulch soon.