snowman411
Newly Registered
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Aug 04, 2013 11:54 am

Killing my current grass.

Hi, I want to completly kill of my current lawn so I can rotavate and seed a new one but don't know how to kill the grass. I have looked at covering but that seems expensive. Can anyone suggest an alternative

imafan26
Mod
Posts: 13961
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2013 8:32 am
Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

Most people kill the grass with something like ground clear, kleenup, or roundup. You may need to apply it more than once to kill all of the weeds. Follow label directions and precautions.

The other way would be to dig out the current grass with a sod cutter, you can rent one, or a spade. Turn it upside down or put it in the compost. If it has a lot of weeds, do this when the weeds are not seeding. Your compost must get hot enough to kill the weed seeds.

You can cover the lawn with newspaper or cardboard or solarize. July and August the are best times to solarize. Solarization helps to kill non-persistant weeds and resolve some soil issues at least temporarily.

If the weeds are very bad, and they are persistant weeds or you have a severe problem with nematodes, your only choice would be soil sterilization. That is usually done by professionals. Soil sterilization will kill everything, plants worms and microbes for up to one year. The soil would have to be enriched after that before anything will grow.


https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in856

snowman411
Newly Registered
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Aug 04, 2013 11:54 am

Thank you covering with cardboad is a great idea I work in a supermarket so will cost me nothing.



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