Hello, I am tagging onto this thread so as not to break the rule of posting a topic that is already posted. I hope people are still reading this thread and will reply. :D I too am planning my garden for next year. We also just bought an acre, so I'm reading this thread with interest! We also have bermuda and johnson grass growing where I want my garden. We also have moles and grasshoppers in droves! I have created a layout and developed a bit of a plan. I know where I want my permanent plants like fruit trees and shrubs. I have a riding mower and am looking at buying a used tiller. But, my questions will help me make this decision! I am thinking about making the paths between beds lawn that I can just mow with the mower, then just rake or blow the grass clippings into the beds. Would it work to put pavers between the lawn path and the bed to keep the grass out? I am wanting to start some beds right away, so I could purchase some compost and supplies. However, I also have moving boxes I can use to begin a lasagna system. I have tons of leaves in the back area I can cart to the garden area. Do I need to till up any of this space? It will be 1/4 acre (includes area for fruit trees). Or, I could order some truckloads of compost and do it all at once. My biggest worry about that is working it into the existing dirt and killing the bermuda where I want to kill it. The existing dirt is like cement right now - even after watering. Does this mean I need a tiller? Or, do I hope that putting compost on top of compacted dirt will work? How well will plant roots break into that? Thanks for reading. emepro

Yes, I have read about gardens built on top of straw bales. I am thinking about planting my turnips and mustard greens on some of them. I guess I could lay off my rows and put the bales between them. Then in the spring cut the cords and spread them. I don't know how far apart I would need them though. A solid row of them between rows would be too much mulch, I guess. The soil is burned out, it was my Dads old garden and he never put any mulch on it. He would dump a few leaves on it then plow them in, in the spring.

I have bad soil, half your garden size, and it greatly improved for things not effected by juglone, squash, corn, melons, etc. You wouldn't believe the size difference of the year before, so I'll always compost or at least throw leaves all over garden area. All you have to do is dump bags of leaves about a foot or two high over the whole garden area, maybe mow them to speed up decomposition, and you will have given your garden lots of great leaf mold, plus you already have your manure. I think the manure could be new because it can age all year before you throw it down. I wouldn't waste the manure until about a month or 2 before planting, or maybe even half at the end of the year, save the other half at the beginning, but some in the middle of the year too. I've got beds for next year, waiting to put them in, but I'm waiting for the leaves to fall and looking into local pastures for manure. I couldn't give advice on weeds being I'm going to plant some good weeds over the area until the beds are in. Try ragweed, dandelion with the flowers pruned off, yellow dock, and a few other deep rooted types of weeds that bring nutrients to the top of the soil. They will make good compost.

Hello again username 5 :-) My sympathies to you for the quack grass. I am sure you have heard the old saying....about changing what you can change and accepting what you can't and the wisdom to know the difference? Well...I agree with you that accepting quack grass is the wisdow to know the difference...lol. I am not sure I don't have it in the lawn, but if I do, I don't think it is everywhere. The one area I think it is in is adjacent to this vegetable area and I am not growing grass there anymore but installing a walkway with flat stones and creeping thymes between it. I am going to mulch that heavily before I do though and maybe let it sit there a whole season before I try laying stone. And I am going to plant the thyme very closely to get it to fill in fast. I am hoping that I may have killed 90% of it this year, in that area, because it has had cardboard and bark mulch covering it for three months and it has only rained twice in two months. I had another area of the yard, that I wanted to put a mulched sitting area in and I left clear plastic covering it for 2 years before we mulched it and put a sitting area there. We barely saw a weed for about 4 years after that, and just started getting them back this year, so we cardboard and bark mulched again and so far haven't had to weed this season. That area didn't have the quack grass in it though. I wanted to use the plastic technique for the quack grass but didn't want to injure the neighbor's trees. So my soil is close to ideal..hmmm...that is good to know. If I just had full sun and about an acre more of land..lol. This land used to be farmland in the 1940s. So I don't have to add lime to the soil for the veggies, right? I seem to do ok with the veggies. Last year was the worst due to horrible weather all season. Rain, cloudy, no breezes, humidity, heat..everything bad and nothing good. I got diseases on my tomatoes that I never got before. Thankfully this year was better. Even the dryness was ok for the tomatoes and peppers with supplemental watering. We also took out a 120 ft of overgrown shrubs along the lot line in the spring which really opened up the yard to air circulation. We planted new shrubs, but it will be awhile before they are that overcrowded. [g] I have one veggie bed near my back door that is on the other side of the yard. It is raised with cement blocks and instead of soil, I piled half finished compost and shredded leaves in it. I put in a couple of kale plants last spring and when it got hot, I pulled them except one that I wanted to leave to go to seed. After I collected the seed, I just left it there when I got busy. I had parsley in the bed too that I wanted to try to winter over. I put more shredded leaves around them and I was so happy to see that the parsley came back this year and has gone to seed. Love when it does that. The beneficial insects love the parsley flowers and I love the seed. The Kale plant, started growing again in the spring so I just left it, it flowered and went to seed again and I got busy again..lol .... and didn't pull it. I was so surprised to see it start growing again after it went to seed, and right now I have a kale plant producing very nice dark green leaves and it is filling up about a 4x4ft area of that bed. No covering either. We juice greens all year, so I am glad to have that plant with no work for it, right next to the back door. What is YMMV? [g] Okay well...you are right, nothing is written in stone. I may try using the lasagna bed technique and I can always add something else in another year if "disappearing" soil becomes a problem. Yes, I am growing all annual crops. How did you find the excavator that brought you in a truckload of soil? Sandy loam sounds great! I am not going to plant up that whole 35x35ft area with veggies. I am going to fill 4 raised beds that are 4x4ft. and I want to construct a structure to house compost and grow squashes and pumpkins etc up the structure. I will have a lot of just mulched area between the beds. WOW! Those silver maple roots are amazing~ ! I am SO sorry for all the trouble they have been to you. If we ever move, I am going to remember that. We had a neighbor 3 yards over just cut down every tree in his backyard. Why oh Why couldn't the people in the next yard do that?! LOL Oh, well, we aren't going to be moving anytime soon, so you are right, just have to make my peace with them. I thought maybe every fall, I should take a shovel and just push it into the ground around the perimeter of the beds to sever any small roots that are trying to get a foothold. I already found out first hand how they will go for anything raised. I have had them fill up a compost pile that I left too long, and have had them in my veggie beds over the years. What can you do...is right! Not very many people have the "perfect" growing environment. Everybody has something. Thanks so much for talking this all over with me. I am much more certain about what I need to do next year, and I can get started getting ready for next year, this fall. I rarely come to this forum. Especially this summer as I barely had a veggie garden. Had some plastic totes from Lowe's with 3 tomato plants, and a pepper plant. Two zuchinni and two eggplants in a bed in the ground...which btw was near that area that I mulched and was FULL of quack grass all season and nothing grew well. I didn't get one eggplant. The container plants grew much better. Two zuchinni were TOO much..lol. Next year, I have been told one is enough. ;-) Oh, btw, how much lawn do you have that has the quack grass in it? Have you tried that corn product that is supposed to suppress weeds? Adam