Cardboarding over lawn fall to spring
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Anonymous
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This is kind of similar to the previous post. We are also purchasing a home with a very neglected landscape. Many invasive vines, invasive bamboo, poison ivy, weeds, overgrown bushes, etc. My plan of attack was to take a weed eater to take stuff to ground level laying down cardboard (we have a lot from moving boxes) over the biggest issue spots to snuff stuff out and prepare for spring planting and grass seed.
Any advice, words of caution would be greatly appreciated? The vines are starting to creep on the house and over take any shrubbery, so please no lecture on letting them live happily in peace. |
Anonymous
Cardboard is certainly earth-friendly and cheap. However, any vine plant that creeps for long distances and pops up will be hard to eradicate this way, as they can stretch the entire length of your garden. We bought a garden in terrible shape, and ended up putting down straw in some areas, mowing down other parts ruthlessly, cutting back all the bushes, and when all was clear, it was easier to see and pull up the vines. We did it little by little, and now it's beautiful. BTW, we do like a natural lawn, so the goal wasn't to achieve a single varietal grass stretch, but just to tame the garden 
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Anonymous
| your neighbors will hate you |
Anonymous
For cleaning up the weeds and neglected landscaping?? Mkay |
Anonymous
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Thank you - With regards to the invasive vines, we do plan on using a combination of cutting them back and using an herbicide to kill them.
I saw another post that recommended putting the end of a vine in a coke bottle with herbicide so it takes it back to the root system in a targeted manner without damaging nearby plants. Is cardboard + straw or mulch, good enough to snuff the lawn out and prepare for spring? |
Anonymous
Lot is private and tucked away, and there is fencing as well. Thanks for your input. |
Anonymous
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You are probably going to have to dig out the invasive vines. It’s the only thing that worked for us. A lot of vines have a waxy coating and are mostly impervious to herbicides. Your cardboard might work to kill the leaves, but the roots will survive and those vines will perk right up in the spring.
We tackled the same kind of project 10 years ago and I still have to rip out vines every other year just to keep it maintained. We had poison Ivy, vinca, English Ivy, pachysandra, and others. Ugh! It’s a ton of work. |
Anonymous
For cardboard that will inevitably start to rot strewn about their yard |
Anonymous
I'm sure PP means that they are going to do the cardboard lasagna method of eradicating weeds and improving the soil. The cardboard will be covered with compost and mulch (else it wouldn't work), and the cardboard will decompose quickly while suppressing the weeds. |
Anonymous
| Lasagna method will not work on bindweed. I sprayed roundup carefully on a windless day. |
Anonymous
| I think you should save your money and effort and have the yard professionally tilled. |
Anonymous
That will just till the weed roots into more parts of the soil. The vines need to be either pulled or killed. I would combine the selective herbicide with your lasagna/cardboard plan. The cardboard works well for normal grass and weeds. It needs to be on for a good long time, like now till April. The really tough weeds will survive and you'll need to keep pulling them in the coming years. But selective herbicide plus lasagna will get you to a point where normal, hand pulling methods of weeding will be possible. Mowing is also reasonable, if you don't mind having your yard a "lawn." Mow the ivy, bindweed, vinca, crabgrass, etc. and it will over time turn into something that looks lawn-like. |
Anonymous
| We're in year 2 and we've done OK with combination of roundup/cardboard in fall of '19, then tilling in the spring of '20, getting a truck full of dirt/compost dumped on top and tilling that in, then planting and covering with mulch. The only weeds I've had to pull are some g-d onions, clumps of wild ginger apparently can regenerated after you till them, and the occasional things that have obviously come in by seed (dandelion). And they have been pretty easy to pull because we have the thick layer of mulch. |
Anonymous
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Follow up question, where's a good place to get dirt and compost. I know a lot of counties provide free mulch.
Are these good prices for compost and soil https://plantsod.com/garden-soil-and-compost/compost/ |
Anonymous
| In MoCo I like RELS for buying bulk soil and compost. |