systlin:

kawuli:

gallusrostromegalus:

systlin:

lastxleviathan:

systlin:

systlin:

Okay. Gardening 101; or “Auntie Sys I have a yard that’s currently a yard and don’t know SHIT or FUCK about how to make it not be a boring-ass yard.”

Step 1; go to your local landfill and get all of the newspaper you can. Cardboard will also work. If your neighborhood puts them out for recycling, go around and grab them all like a little newspaper goblin.

Step 2; acquire mulch. If you WANT, you can go pay for it at a garden store, but we’re all cheap lazy bitches here so screw that. Most landfills will collect yard waste and branches and chip them into woodchips, which you can get for PENNIES or FREE. Go load up on that good shit.

I like straw too, which I can get for barter because I am related to half the people around here and a solid 65% of my extended family are farmers. I give Uncle Daryl three quarts of elderberry jelly or a couple pounds of morels in spring and he loads me up with straw bales.

Step 3; figure what parts of grass you want to be not-grass, and cover that shit in newspaper, good and thick. 5-10 layers. It helps to wet the newspaper to keep it from blowing away as you work.

Now, cover that newspaper with a good thick layer of mulch.

Congrats, you’re removing the grass. It’ll starve to death under the mulch and newspaper and rot into compost. You now have garden beds and have not dug one single bit of sod.

If you can’t wait for six months to plant, pull the mulch aside, cut a hole in the newspaper, and dig out a plug of sod the size of the planting hole. Throw some compost in there and plant. Tuck mulch back around plant. Water well.

There ya go. Garden beds. In a year, when you pull back the mulch the newspaper will be almost rotted away, and the soil underneath soft and loamy.

I like to edge garden beds like this with rocks, which I can ALSO get for free because I live in the part of Iowa dotted with limestone quarries. Just, pick that shit up along the road and

I’m collecting flat ones for a FREE crazy paving path too.

I love you for this.

No prob.

Protip; the best way to do a large area without killing your knees or back is to load up a bucket of water with newspaper, sit down on the grass, and sorta scoot your ass along as you drag the bucket with you, newspapering as you go.

Then dump buckets of mulch on that and spread it out with your feet. Just sorta kick it where you want it to be.

Source; my 61 year old mom with bad knees.

AAAAAAAYY my mom did the much-to-get-rid-of-lawn thing over the course of a winter- she’d read the paper in the morning then go spread it out on the lawn and toss muclh on it.  By spring it was ready to cut holes ans dump irism day lillies and peonies into.

and all this BEFORE she got her hip replaced.

10/10, recycling, enviornmental stewardship, loos baller AND YOU DON’T HAVE TO MOW.

If you don’t live somewhere where you can just pick up big rocks wherever, check construction sites or places they’re replacing sidewalks and ask for chunks of broken concrete. Those also make good borders for gardens/raised beds.

Yup. Bricks too, and like hunks of concrete most construction companies are more than happy to get rid of them.

If you know how to cultivate moss, you can then cover the bricks or concrete or rocks with moss.