Grass to Gravel

10 years ago

Hello all!

My fiance and I are very new to gardening. We have a fairly small backyard and we are wanting to replace our grass with gravel. Eventually we are wanting to put garden boxes all around the area. I attached a picture of what we invision.

We are wondering how we go about removing all the grass properly (ie making sure it doesnt grow back).

Thank you all so much :):)

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Comments (5)

jean001a
10 years ago
If you replace all the grass with gravel then, later on, you'll need to remove all the gravel to make the planting beds. So why make extra work for yourself?
lucillle
10 years ago
Estefa,

At my previous house I tried gravel between the beds. Even put down plastic first. The first year or two it looked wonderful, just like your picture. Then, the rocks pierced the plastic, mud seeped in, weeds grew leaves fell onto the gravel and were not easily raked/swept up.

My current back yard has no grass, but there is plenty of mulch between the beds, delivered free by tree companies (Trees, Inc., they are in Houston too). I can replenish it for free whenever I want. I'm much happier.
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My sideyard. It was impossible to keep the St Augustine nice because we have moles that come out of the field in the back. So voila! no more moles! In my situation gravel is a no-brainer. I would not go back to grass. My backyard. The gravel was put down in the spring of 2008. I put brick edging down in this spring. This is called spurge. I hate it. If left alone it gets to be 2' across and reseeds terribly. I just used RoundUp in the front circle after I let it get out of hand. I have bought Halts to prevent this in the future but haven't put it out yet. This one is about 5" across and comes out easily. This is the type of weed I get in the backyard. It pulls out easily. I found 2 of them when I was taking photos today. They're not a problem. This one is about 3" tall. It just rained, and you can see the gray color darkens when wet. The grass on the left is not on my property. It's part of the water retention area, but I planted it and mow it. It's the only grass I will have soon. My front garden. This photo was taken before I mulched in May so I'm embarrassed that it's not pretty. It's called crushed granite, and stones are 1/2" and smaller. I laid 15-year weed cloth from Lowe's under it. The gravel is about 2"-3" thick. You can make it thicker if you want. I push a wheelbarrow on it without a problem. After you first spread it, it will feel a little squishy under your feet, but when you hose it down well, the dust washes down and the gravel will lock into it and the jagged cuts of the gravel lock into themselves, making it very solid and easy to walk on - but NOT with bear feet. You can see I have oak trees, and they drop leaves constantly it seems. It surprised me how well the blower works on the gravel to get rid of the leaves. You can't blow straight down, but if you do, the damage is easily smoothed out with your foot. I use oak leaves for mulch so they're always blowing around. Gravel in my yard is as close to maintenance free as you can get short of pavement. I have one last strip of grass alongside the driveway which is coming out in the fall. I would not use it without weedcloth, but it doesn't migrate into the beds even without the edging. It does look better with edging. Hope this is helpful. They use this stuff in parking lots a lot. BTW, I bought what they called "contaminated granite". It had pieces of limestone in it whether by accident or on purpose I don't know. But regular crushed granite was $60 a yard, and this was $35. To me the few white rocks scattered around don't look bad, aren't really noticeable. Sherry
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Tiffany, purpleinopp Z8b Opp, AL
10 years ago
Grass (and weeds) will grow just as easily in gravel, and are then harder to pull or dig.

But to answer your question, there are 3 options. You can dig up the grass and top layer of the soil, making sure you remove all of the roots. You can smother the grass under cardboard, newspaper, plastic, sheet metal, until it is dead. You can spray chemicals on it.
ptwonline
10 years ago
I was in a similar position a couple of years ago as you are now: looking to remove grass, put in raised beds, and then fill the areas between with gravel.

However, instead of putting in gravel I decided to use mulch for the parts in between the beds. And I am very, very glad I did. Since I was new to gardening I didn't know 100% of what I wanted, and now I am finding that I am changing my garden beds around to something that will work better. If I had put in gravel to start with it would have been a huge amount of work wasted, and then more work to move the gravel. However, if you are 100% sure that you know what you want from the start, then go ahead.

Also, what kind of gravel were you thinking of? From the pic it looks like you might have been thinking of crush gravel like they use on roads. That will eventually form a nice, hard path and help keep the weeds out. If you choose looser gravel it may be nice to walk on and look great, but dirt/seeds tend to get in and after a few years you'll have grass and weeds sprouting which can be frustrating, but manageable with some work.
gardenper
10 years ago
The suggestions for removing the grass are good.

In my case, I do have such a gravel/rock section in my yard also, but not as big as what you are intending.

I ended up having some of the same problems as others mentioned. The previous owners had used landscape fabric, so that eventually tore/wore out and plants started coming through. It is harder to get rid of them than if I could have just hoed down the area.

Because the fabric tore, as well as probably not having a stable foundation under the fabric, then over time, I find that I am stepping the rocks down further and further into the ground. I have to replenish rocks in different sections of this landscaping every year. Probably every 6-12 months, I buy what equates to about 120-180 pounds of pebbles/rocks/stones to fill in these bad spots. You would think that that is enough as filler for an area that is already mostly like that, but after pouring all those bags in, I still see areas that could have used another covering or redo.

The idea still may work if you would use a different kind of weed block and also have several inches of the gravel cover, but hopefully someone else can chime in on what actually worked for them.

Grass to Gravel

Comments (5)

jean001a

lucillle

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