Fall Project: Lazy Garden Bed Extensions - October 2024

Over the years, I've created and expanded garden beds using various methods including digging out all the turf, flipping the turf and (more recently) doing some combination of digging/flipping the turf and layering on cardboard to supress the grass.  That cardboard smothering method seems to work pretty well and it is well...easy.  At least it is FAR easier than digging out the turf.  But, the cardboard method has a big drawback - the grass is *STILL THERE*.  So, that means it is tricky to plant in the bed immediately.

If you plant in the cardboard zone, you have be careful to remove the turf around any 'holes' in the cardboard that you want to plant in - otherwise you'll end up with grass peeking through around the stems/trunks of whatever you plant.  Trust me...I know.  

My problem is that I don't plan ahead enough and get the beds ready BEFORE I want to plant them.  So, why shouldn't I use some of this "Fall Planting" time to build out new/extend existing beds in a lazy way and wait until Spring to plant them.  

For the past few years, I've sort-of edged-out my front porch beds inch-by-inch to make room for various things - first...the Autumn Moor Grasses and more recently the French Marigolds.    Everytime I'd want to plan something new up there, I'd get out my shovel and dig up the turf (that constantly creeps into the bed) to make room.  But, it ALWAYS ended up tight in there.  

Time to change that.  

Over the past few weeks, I've been collecting cardboard that I used to plant the two new front-yard conifer trees (recently) and ended up having some extra cardboard laying around.  Why not extend the front porch beds a little bit, right?

I laid out the cardboard and sprayed it to get it wet and sort-of lock-it-in-place.  Then, I went and picked up a load of municipal biosolids and layered that on top.  On top of the biosolids went a couple of inches of compost (that came from our bins!).  I used a small rake and combined the biosolids and compost while sprinkling the combination with the hose to wet-it-down.  I've found that biosolids will trap the limited moisture on top if left un-raked, but you want to get them working and breaking down and mingling with the compost, so raking + 'sprinkling' is the way to go. 

I didn't edge this bed, just left the turf and cardboard running up against each other.  On top of the compost + biosolids went a thick layer of big box wood-chip mulch.  Not the finest of stuff, but will do the job to suppress the weeds.  

Have a look at the process below.  First, I cut the grass down sort - scalping it.  Then, I laid 16" or so deep of cardboard - extending it from the current edge of the border.  On top went biosolids (municpal) and compost and finally mulch.

You can see the cardboard peeking out below.  I extended the bed *down* the front stoop a bit, too:

Below is a look further down the line.  Also...those Autumn Moor Grasses are showing off, aren't they?

And, here below, is a look 'down the line'.  I didn't finish the full bed (yet), but was able to get about 2/3rds of the way down.  This photo below shows how far out I've extended the bed:  about 2 feet at the closest edge and between 12" and 16" across the front:

This Fall, I'm going to try to 'top' this bed (and others) with some mulched leaves.  Then, come next Spring, I'll create a new 'edge' in the front of this bed and utilize the new space to plant annuals.  

My plan is to find a few more spots in the coming weeks to replicate this process.  First, I suppose I should FINISH this edge.  That requires more cardboard, biosolids, compost (which I have on-hand) and some mulch.  I can think of a few spots - around the patio, IB2DWs, a Parkway bed and even extending the (newly extended) island bed.  

I figure...I'll have six months of 'cooking'  (Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb, March, April) in these new beds before I'll plant them.  That would give things (I hope?) enough time to kill the grass, melt-away the cardboard, and get the soil into a more loam-y consistency.