How to Turn a Lawn Into Vegetable Gardens
If you have decided to turn your lawn into a vegetable garden, you have made an excellent choice! You can invest time and money into maintaining grass or invest it in growing your own produce! And there is nothing like growing and eating your own home grown produce. You can have it ready for planting in the spring season.
- Get a soil test from the extension agency in your county for a small fee. They will send the samples away and a report will be sent to you explaining your soil's pH and composition. It will explain what you need to add to prepare the soil for planting.
- Break up the area you are planting in. A turnover plow followed by several passes with a chisel plow is the best way to go for breaking new soil. You may need to hire or ask someone with the right equipment to do it. Alternatively, the Amish do it with only shovels.
- Remove medium and large rocks and broken sod. Tender roots cannot develop well in rocky soil and the weeds and grass must go. The sod chunks and weeds are compostable.
- Follow the instructions on your soil test report and add fertilizer, such as manure. Try to find manure that is free of weed seeds to save you work later on. Poultry manure is a better choice than horse manure for this reason.
- Rototill the amendments prescribed from your soil report and the fertilizer into the soil well. This distributes the amendments and fluffs up the soil for the tender root systems of the plants.
- Inspect the soil for rocks, sod and weeds a final time.
- Section off the area for planting in rows. Remember to keep plants that will grow taller than the others on the north side of the garden so they don't shade smaller plants.
- Keep rows marked with sticks or short posts.
- Lay several sheets of black and white newspaper and mulch between plant rows when plants reach a few inches in height.