KILL YOUR LAWN

HOW TO KILL

SODCUTTER : Rent a sodcutter. This machine cuts the roots two to three inches deep and disconnects the grass from the soil beneath. The “rugs” of grass must then be flipped over so that the roots can be exposed to the sun and it will die. Does not work well with Bermuda grass since Bermuda grass roots go so deep and the stolons - the tiny bits of root left in the soil when you rip it out - can resprout and become new full-grown plants. The “rugs” of sod that you flip over are left on the ground as a mulch, protecting the ground beneath from getting baked by the sun. The dead sod can be moved aside whenever you need to dig and plant Pros : can kill a lawn in a day, especially bluegrass or St. Augustine Grass, leaving you with essentially a blank canvas Cons : labor intensive, sodcutter is heavy as shit.

SOLARIZATION/SMOTHERING : Cover lawn with a tarp or cardboard and mulch (need lots of mulch, like a dumptruck full).

BIT-BY-BIT :

TILLING : Only possible with grass species that do not spread by stolons, like bermuda does. Bermuda grass is extremely hard to kill and often requires constant weeding or site-specific spraying and selective, targeted applications of herbicide using a large piece of cardboard to prevent over-spraying or hitting native plants. Tilling essentially “chops up” and plows the lawn into the ground beneath. With species like Kentucky bluegrass, it works like a charm. With Bermuda, it is pointless.

The key take-away no matter what is that after you kill the lawn, you will essentially be planting and nurturing the natives, while continuing to go in and periodically remove or weed-wack/spray/dig-up-with-a-garden-knife any remaining bits of grass that pop up. I highly suggest against using herbicide unless you have one of the very invasive and aggressive grass species like Bermuda or Kikuyu Grass. St. Augustine Grass, by comparison, is easy to remove and kill.

The process of constant maintenance works because the native shrubs you initially plant (which should be easy to grow, common keystone members of your local ecosytem) will eventually outcrowd and overgrow the invasive grasses, and you will be the disturbance force that selects for the natives and selects against the attempted re-intrusion of the grasses. After a long growing season where you have watered the natives, any competition will successfully be put at bay since the natives have taken most of the available light and root space. Once you have reached this point, very little continued maintenance is necessary, especially for prairie gardens since prairies tend to be so dense.

So you want to kill your lawn? And what would replace it?

How to get started?

Step 1 : Find the remaining last bits of “natural” areas that contain some fragmented remnants of the remaining native plant species that once grew in your area. Visit these places, document what you see and take pictures of plants that interest you. Let these photos serve as study notes. Upload your photos to an app like inaturalist (obscure the location for privacy purposes) and other users or the AI will identify them. Pay attention to what family they are in. The more you do this, the more you will start to notice shared traits whether it be horticultural tolerance, flower shape, phytochemistry (ie smell of crushed leaves) among the plants in that family. You are starting to become familiar with the plants around you. You will start to notice things you didn’t notice before.

Step 2. Connect with native plant societies in your area, visit native plant growers, find others to talk to about your newfound shared interest.

Step 3. KILL THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR LAWN. Rent a sodcutter from a local big box store or equipment supply company if you want it done quick. Otherwise, sheet-mulch with cardboard and overlay with free mulch or woodchips from a tree company that is in need of a place to dump. Use a service like chipdrop.com or call tree companies out of the yellow pages. Mulch can sometimes be very easy to come by for free.

Step 4. Start planting native plants that you purchase from a nursery or better yet from seed that you have collected from nearby patches of native plants yourself.

HOW TO COMPILE A SPECIES LIST OF NATIVE PLANTS FOR YOUR REGION USING THE INATURALIST APP :

Go to www.inaturalist.org and select the “explore” feature”. In the taxon (ie species) field, type “plants”. You can also search by plant order (ie “Asterales” - sunflower order), family (“Campanulaceae” - Lobelia family), genus (Lobelia), etc.

Next, go to the “location” field. You can search by continent, state/province, county, town etc. If the name of a particular place comes up in the suggestions that pop up once you type it, you can search it.

Click “go” and you will get a list of every plant that occurs within the boundaries of the location you typed in.

Under the “species” tab you will get a list of individual species (not just all the observations). Most species popping up will be native (ideally), but in heavily disturbed or urban areas, it is likely that many invasives or non-native horticultural species will pop up, too, so be sure to click the taxon name in order to be taken to the taxon page of that particular species where you will be able to read the wikipedia entry and see the plant’s distribution to confirm that it is indeed native to your area.

You can use this tool as a way to compile a list of potential native species to plant in your yard once you’ve killed the shit outta your lawn nice.