Lawns cover more than 50,000 square miles of American soil and consume more fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide than all chemicals used in our food related agriculture combined (lawns only make good eating if you are a grazing animal).
Lawns contribute to the pollution of our watersheds, demand mowing, watering and other time- and energy-intensive maintenance tasks.
From a Permaculture Design perspective, when we identify their high-energy trails and resource use, we see that lawns, for all their inputs, have little beneficial outputs.
Redirecting energy toward more productive yields are what Permaculture Design’s recommended techniques and strategies are best used for. In Permaculture we arrive at a solution -- and in this case we arrive at using the energy for food production instead of for… well, no production.
Though contrary to the popular notion, Permaculture is not about gardening (and this article really isn’t helping that misconception either), yet the Permaculture approach to problem solving does indeed lead us to some interesting natural models for managing energy flow and resource use, and in this case that does lead us to gardening.
Sheet Mulching -- Grass into Gardens
The sheet-mulching technique is based on “mimicking the conditions of a forest floor.” In most natural systems, soil evolves in layers. The forest is piled high with leaf mulch that protects a rich layer of well-composted soil and organic matter teeming with soil micro-organisms. Below that is the humus-enriched mineral soils.
In layer mulching or sheet mulching (there is a similar method called Lasagna Gardening) – what ever you want to call it -- you copy the natural processes of a forest and create your new garden soil in layers, and in this case, right over your existing lawn. There are no real rules to sheet mulching; all organic layers will eventually decompose and provide nutrients to the soil.
Accelerating Evolution
1) To speed up the process (a forest may take a thousand years to build a few inches of soil) we almost always first start with laying down an organic weed-smothering barrier of some kind, right over the existing lawn.
We have successfully used thickly layered newspaper, but a favorite is layers of cardboard (large boxes work best, fastest, and with less blowing around). Layers of banana or other giant leaves will work well. We have even used old blue jeans and cotton sheets.
2) Now that the grass is covered, thoroughly wet it down.
3) Next, you can layer a couple inches of (well-composted) organic compost.
4) On top of that, add a thick layer of carbonaceous mulch like wood chips, straw, leaves, nutshells, etc. (can be coarse), a minimum of 6” thick.
5) TIP: the sign of the true garden designer extraordinaire is that neither the lawn nor the cardboard layers show – and the final layer is a fine topping of nice-looking and -smelling mulch. Try different colors of finely shredded bark or chocolate-scented hulls of cocoa beans, even pressed grapes from the winery. My friends at Terra Nova Landscaping top with a variety of chai teas (left over from the brewing process)!
6) Over the newly transformed area, the garden design can emerge… stepping stones, benches and raised beds, and don’t forget the trellises for fruiting and flowering vines.
7) You can plant immediately. Remember Nature mixes perennials with annuals. Add pockets of compost with each new plant. For spot planting one-gallon and larger plants, slide the layers away, cut through the weed barrier layer with a sharp knife, dig a hole, add compost and plant. Replace the mulch layers – viola! Instant gardens, ready for your drip irrigation.
Garden Goddesses and Food Forest Foragers…
The “swansong for the lawn” initiates the transition to garden space: vegetable gardens and home-scale food forests, full of the richness of biodiversity. Nothing could be simpler: no weeding, no digging, never tilling. Just layer, plant, water and harvest.
Note: This sheet mulching method is best for converting weeds and bunching and creeping grass types. So a word of caution; some stoloniferous and rhizomatous grass types (like Bermuda grass) are hard to fully smother and convert with this method.
Also remember that grass grows strongest when it has been mowed (it did after all, co-evolve with grazing animals), so allowing grass and weeds to grow as tall as possible before smothering with the layers works best. The grass becomes new “compost material” before ever breaking through. If grasses do manage to reemerge, they are quite easy to pull. Then just re- sheet mulch that spot.
Larry Santoyo thinks lawns are tragic- but gardens magic! –get free help converting your front lawn into a food forest garden. Find out more about the Lawns into Gardens Exchange Program –contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
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