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Poor Man's Lawn Kill
🕑 Added 2025-05-16 11:20:50 +0000 UTCPOOR MAN'S LAWN-KILL
I put this together the other day and haven't polished it up yet but this is a preliminary way to kill your lawn and get a "meadow" (I kind of hate that word tbh) of native pioneer species going.
Pioneer species, of course, are the plants that show up first after any kind of ecological disturbance and can thrive in full sun and less-than-ideal conditions. They are usually annuals or short-lived perennials, but they make way for the slower-growing, less-tolerant-of-parched-soil-and-full-sun species that come in later like woody shrubs and small trees. After all, a lawn kill is basically just ecological succession in progress...
Works best if lawn already half-dead or dead from drought/lack of irrigation/neglect
Step 1 : Dump truck load of mulch. Can be obtained for free or for minimal cost from arborist or municipal compost/waste facility. This is NOT dyed mulch, just essentially ground up tree chips. Can also be procured from chipdrop.com or by calling an arborist and asking if they need to dump. Sometimes can possibly contain seeds of invasive species or weeds depending on your source and what species were ground up into chips. Who cares. You'll have to pull them later anyway.
Step 2 : spread extra thick, thicker than you think you'll need. This stuff breaks down faster than you think especially in higher rainfall climates.
Step 3 : Acquire native plants in 1 gallon containers or smaller. Clear mulch for each individual planting, only clearing a slightly bigger hole in the mulch than the hole you'll be digging. Keep mulch from"burying" the plant though it touching the stem. You're essentially just going to be left with a little "bird's nest" where the plant goes
Step 4 : Mark each individual planting with stakes that you acquire for free. Use two foot sticks or bamboo stakes (scour brush piles in alley for sticks or neighborhoods/public or commercial landscaping for patches of invasive bamboo, ask property owners if you can cut some). This is not to help support the plants but to give them visual gravity in the landscape so they don't get stepped on or accidentally mowed or otherwise forgotten about. You will be able to find them easily when you go to pull weeds later.
Step 5 : water as needed.
Step 6 : if spreading seeds of native pioneer species like Verbesina encelioides or Solidago sp, clear mulch In the area you intend to sow seed to a depth of only one inch no more. Scatter seeds and mix it in with the 1-in deep mulch.
Step 7 : Go back intermittently and either spot apply Roundup to invasive weeds like Bermuda grass or other patches of turf grass that survived the mulch dumping, all the while being sure to avoid spraying native plants that you planted or sowed the seed of. You can use a piece of cardboard or stolen political yard sign to protect the natives while spraying the nearby invasives if they are super close together.
As the yard continues to grow in, continue to remove Bermuda or other undesirable non-native weeds or natives that are aggressive. Prune with electric hedgers to keep it "tidy" so the squares and perfume-dampered knobs at City Hall stay off your back. If an HOA giving you hell, the board members can be used as compost after being mixed in with biochar in a 30-1 blend.
The ideal here is to both produce more seeds of the native flowering pioneer species and also feed a ton of life like native bees, butterflies, moths, lizards and birds. These pioneer species also end up creating the microclimate required for slower-growing shrubs and small trees to get established by shielding the ground from direct sun, beefing up relative humidity in the immediate area, and providing root scaffolding for beneficial soil microbes. Nothing enriches dead compacted soil like the roots of healthy, growing plants.
Eventually, weeds will taper off as the natives outcompete them for light, root space and water (all with your periodic help).
Comments
Nearby Couch
I'm not Joey, but hand removal is pretty effective in my experience. I've been moving my sod one bunch at a time, cutting around it and so I get out the roots, and filling back in with a mix of compost and topsoil. Grass is easier, it's the taproot type plants like dandelions where you can bust off the taproot and make the plant grow back twice as strong. I still have to fight weeds, but to me that's part of the game -- free green compost (arguably)
Laura Carbonneau
Howdy! Thanks for this. I was wondering if you’d be open to me creating a handout with this info, to have at the Ney Museum at your talk but also available to share ( and we could have a section for local resources that other could edit)
Rachel B
I've only got a small area at the moment (maybe 3 square metres) so I'm pulling out the useless patch of buffalo grass by hand, I figure it's the best way to give the natives a better chance at getting settled in. Am I wasting my time?
