The result. In 5-7 weeks I'll plant stuff throughout. That's a shorter wait than ideal to kill the underlying grass, but my potted plants and I are impatient. 🌱
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exciting!
aug 31, 2025, 11:37 am • 2 0 • view
I've been looking forward to this for ... I guess maybe ever since planning the first patch, so over a year 😂 gardening cultivates SOME patience.
aug 31, 2025, 12:00 pm • 2 0 • view
patience & humility! what all is going in here?
aug 31, 2025, 1:50 pm • 3 0 • view
Kinda whatever I still have on hand from winter sowing etc 😅 but that includes, in the woody category: - elderberry bushes grown from cuttings - a volunteer sycamore sapling to help replace the late maples - 1-3 redbuds (they are ubiquitous at plant swaps) - several black chokeberry I grew from seed
aug 31, 2025, 3:52 pm • 3 0 • view
- and also a couple Carolina allspice I grew from seed Among forbs: - cardinal flower - meadow beauties - spotted Joe Pye - blue vervain - downy goldenrod - senna (I have 2 species, need to check condition fit) - swamp milkweed - Allegheny monkeyflower - spotted bee balm - butterfly weed ...
aug 31, 2025, 4:03 pm • 7 0 • view
Sounds amazing!
aug 31, 2025, 5:33 pm • 1 0 • view
Ty! Someone in the neighborhood complimented the progress today, it was so weird. My anxiety about people disliking this very big front yard garden remains high.
aug 31, 2025, 6:45 pm • 4 0 • view
once it’s established and blooming though I am sure you won’t have any angsty thoughts though. plant list looks amazing
sep 1, 2025, 10:29 am • 2 0 • view
My neighbors are mostly positive about mine. Some are indifferent, meaning, they're very much, "you do you, idgaf," and there's one or two grumpy folks I know about who wish my fence was a white plastic privacy fence like everyone else's and they wish my entire lawn was grass like everyone else's. 🤷♀️
sep 1, 2025, 3:35 pm • 2 0 • view
I tell my daughters that maybe when they’re grown the front yard prairie/native plants will be common. for now it’s the outlier but if lawn bro neighbor hates it, that’s none of my concern. 🌸🌱
sep 1, 2025, 5:46 pm • 3 0 • view
And I just got buzzed by a hummingbird so they can suck it
aug 31, 2025, 6:55 pm • 2 0 • view
Yeah ... they are Wrong
sep 1, 2025, 1:25 am • 0 0 • view
My neighbors hate me but are quiet about it. I'm a lone oasis in a sea of lawn
aug 31, 2025, 6:54 pm • 2 0 • view
- nodding onion - Culver's root - fireweed - shrubby St John's wort - Virginia spiderwort - bluets - wild petunias - one or two beardtongue species Honestly I should probably edit this as it is too much variety, lol
aug 31, 2025, 4:03 pm • 7 0 • view
Ohhh yeah baby big mulch patch!!
aug 31, 2025, 1:44 am • 3 0 • view
I've never done sheet mulching. I've always dug up the grass, broad forked the clay soil to get the rocks out so I could get a shovel in to make a planting hole, then mulched, then planted. I'd like to try doing it this way so I can at least eliminate hand digging the grass out.
aug 31, 2025, 10:07 am • 3 0 • view
Have you always done it this way? Any issues with heavy rain washing away the mulch? That's my biggest worry. When we get heavy rain, because everything here is on a slope, all of the mulch runs out of my beds and all over the place. 🤦♀️
aug 31, 2025, 10:09 am • 1 0 • view
We're not on much of a slope here. We have dug grass out and backfilled with compost and/or mulch before, and have had similar success with the plantings.
aug 31, 2025, 11:02 am • 1 0 • view
Do you have rocky soil?
aug 31, 2025, 11:05 am • 1 0 • view
Just contemplating the level of deadpan understatement in this question given what followed 😂 💚
aug 31, 2025, 12:05 pm • 1 0 • view
I'm just trying to figure out the process of how sheet mulching might work. I'm an engineer. I'm trying to find the approach given rocky soil. I think it would be: cut grass super low, heavily mulch, wait a very long time until grass is certainly dead, Broadfork and dig rocks, mulch, plant.
aug 31, 2025, 12:13 pm • 1 0 • view
I'm at 8% slope, which doesn't seem like a lot, but I'm lower than the neighbors to the left and behind me and when we get heavy rain, I get their water. I have a little river through my yard. The danger here is all the mulch washing away, which would be annoying, but more annoying than digging sod?
aug 31, 2025, 12:15 pm • 2 0 • view
Have you messed around with berms and swales? Or not a suitable solution for your situation?
aug 31, 2025, 12:18 pm • 2 0 • view
Not yet. I am contemplating a dry creek/swale situation in the future.
aug 31, 2025, 12:28 pm • 1 0 • view
Somewhat - mostly clay, but a prior owner clearly used white stone for some landscaping purpose or other 🙃 so it is pretty densely mixed in, some places. Also like ... old brick. We only aim to remove very large chunks though.
aug 31, 2025, 11:11 am • 3 0 • view
This is what I have, immediately under the turf, and so close together I have to tease them out with the times of a broadfork. I can't get a shovel in the ground. 🤦♀️
aug 31, 2025, 11:36 am • 7 0 • view
I figure if I can at least kill the grass with mulch, that's a bit less manual labor. Because I'm going to have to dig out this mess after the grass is dead before I plant anything. 🤷♀️
aug 31, 2025, 11:38 am • 1 0 • view
Holy moly! Is that natural stone? Even if it's brick or something, it's kind of lovely. But eeegh, I can hardly imagine what a pain that is. And back-breaking on top of it. In your shoes I'd be tempted to just lay down a lot of compost and mulch and let the plant roots figure it out.
aug 31, 2025, 12:03 pm • 2 0 • view
Yes, I've been told it's called shale. I can't do anything here without my Meadowcreature Broadfork. It's actually not that physically hard, because of leverage. It's harder to put all of these rocks in a wheelbarrow and push them to the driveway. People come for the "free rocks."
aug 31, 2025, 12:09 pm • 2 0 • view
Red shale! Growing up in upstate NY, I learned shale was a dark gray horizontally layered, very fragile sedimentary rock. Fun to break into shards either by throwing or sometimes even by hand. The earth is real cool, is I guess the upshot of all that
aug 31, 2025, 12:16 pm • 2 0 • view
And more to the point - that makes sense. Do you use a one- or two-wheel wheelbarrow? We have one of each and I could imagine maneuvering a one-wheel being a tenuous affair, at least with my particular (mediocre) physical prowess 😅
aug 31, 2025, 12:16 pm • 2 0 • view
I love sheet mulching! So much easier
sep 1, 2025, 2:08 am • 3 0 • view
the impatience is so real!!!
aug 31, 2025, 1:36 am • 3 0 • view
i was counting out the weeks if i follow Prairie Moon’s site prep recommendations and.. I don’t want to wait until next spring!
aug 31, 2025, 1:38 am • 4 0 • view
I think my plants otherwise overwintering in pots sets a fire under my ass a bit, in addition to my less rational impatience 😅 I've never contemplated switching to a less-bad lawn though; would there be big pros to doing it faster?
aug 31, 2025, 2:11 am • 2 0 • view
i think it’s mostly a matter of weed management. the previous owner had let the yard become overgrown w pretty substantial tree canopy as far as i can tell, so i expect there’s a lot of invasive plant seeds still hanging out in the soil
aug 31, 2025, 2:30 am • 3 0 • view
Another method that doesn't get as much traction on r/nolawns is cover cropping. Buckwheat is a great way to knock out at least a portion of the seed bank if you don't want to do lasagna for the full 6-12 months (plus it's pretty!).
aug 31, 2025, 4:12 pm • 4 0 • view
oooh thank you for the tip!
aug 31, 2025, 4:16 pm • 3 0 • view
I’m going to be very interested to hear how you feel it worked for you. I did the sod cutting/removal and then rototilling because we had a lot of tree roots to remove. I know now that messing up the soil layers is a bad idea, so wouldn’t do that again. So let us know how your method works!
sep 1, 2025, 4:02 pm • 2 0 • view
This method worked really well for the garden between this patch and the house! So far so good.
sep 1, 2025, 7:28 pm • 2 0 • view
🌱 Wonderful! Converting lawn to a native plant space is an effort, but so worth it. For those looking for resources check out the NDAL. The most recent article about Sara’s method, and one of the online trainings. www.bbc.com/future/artic... www.ndal.org/upcoming-eve...
sep 1, 2025, 3:20 am • 5 1 • view
Is it just cardboard under wood mulch chips? Coincidentally my wife and I were talking about setting up an area to do this today. But thought it took basically until spring. How can one accelerate it that much to be done before the first frost ish time?
aug 31, 2025, 12:48 pm • 1 0 • view