sheet mulch and cover crops
I am planning to sheet mulch my lawn when the weather turns cooler, to convert it to perennials and herb plantings,and remove the grass.
Is there any advantage to planting a cover crop such as legumes or clover to improve the soil, before putting down the sheet mulch?
If I do plant a cover crop, would it have to be tilled into the soil before putting down the sheet mulch?
Thank you.
rmkurshan
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(post #11781, reply #1 of 5)
You don't need to plant a cover crop. The advantages to cover crops is that, till you're ready to plant you bed, they help crowd out weeds and, if you use legumes, they fix nitrogen. Any cover crop, when tilled in, will add organic matter - a good thing if the soil is poor.
If you're converting lawn, you'll have organic matter. The lawn is, well, a cover crop. You don't need to till it in if you're going to cover it. If you're planning to put down landscape fabric, then you do need to till. Otherwise, you'll never be able to loosen the soil. I don't think you'll find alot of support for landscape fabric. Eventually you regret putting it down and it is a HUGE pain to remove it. Instead, you can lay down newspaper (several sheets thick), water it down or wet it before you put it down, then put mulch on top of it. If you have a creeping type grass, you really need to kill it before you cover it. Using the paper method, you don't have to till the soil.
Jeana
Never try to baptize a cat.
(post #11781, reply #2 of 5)
Cover the grass with newspaper and cover the newspaper with a mulch material. The paper will deprive the grass of access to the sunlight it needs to grow and that grass will then die. If you have some invasive grasses, such as Quack grass, you will find that it will grow back, but I have found that pulling the roots from the soil is fairly easy. In my sand I find that the soil is nice and friable about 6 months after covering it and in both Indiana and Ohio the clay soils were the same, nice and workable after about 6 months.
West central Michigan along the lake shore
A sign of a good gardener is not a green thumb, rather it is brown knees.
West central Michigan along the lake shore
A sign of a good gardener is not a green thumb, rather it is brown knees.
(post #11781, reply #5 of 5)
I love the little statement at the end of your post "the sign of a good gardner is not a green thumb but brown knees' I have four pair of jeans I alternate to garden in. They both have the knees out. My winter job (when the snow flies up here) is to mend all the holes with some bright red fabric and be ready next summer for another session of crawling around in the dirt. Which, by the way, I love to do.
(post #11781, reply #3 of 5)
Maybe you could do two things. Do your sheet mulch, then when spring comes turn that under and top it off with a quick growing annual grass of some kind, and turn that under once it is full grown. It might be possible if the timing is right. I think it might involve about a month of growing in the spring. Depends on your climate zone.
I'm going to cover my vegetable garden with a winter rye this fall, to turn under in the spring.
Pinetree Garden Seeds has a nice selection of cover crops, online.
New Mexico home organic gardener
Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience. Emerson
(post #11781, reply #4 of 5)
Thanks to everyone who responded.
rmkurshan