1/ Thoughts on how to convert grass into growing beds, inspired by stories about my grandpa & by various small-scale ag YouTubers such as Patrick from Red Gardens :

2/ First, my grandpa.

In the late 40s, my mom's family bought a house that had just been built in a brand new neighbourhood. The way my mom tells it the back yard was still intact prairie (aka stolen Ojibwe, Dakota, and Métis land).

3/ It was mid spring when they moved in. Grandpa mowed the grasses in the back yard, then set about cutting the sod out with a spade.

Each piece of sod he cut (the sides of which were roughly the width of his spade), he flipped over, in place.

4/ Plants and plant roots are important organic matter - soil food - though this method will also a) not kill most grasses and b) plant a gazillion weed seeds.

5/ Once the back yard sod was flipped, Grandpa marked planting rows, cut slits directly into the flipped sod, & planted *the entire yard* to potatoes.

Mom doesn't remember the rest of the story; she was a small child & her fascination ended with the summer weather & new friends.

6/ However, Grandpa would have gone on to hill the potatoes at least once (no small labour, since he would have done so by shoveling disturbed sod/dirt from the pathways onto the growing potato plants instead of other small scale potato hilling methods I now use)...

7/ ... and Grandma would have helped him weed the back yard all summer (she would have been a tyrant about it). There would be *lots* of prairie trying to re-grow until the ground froze in the mid-fall.

8/ The point is: some vegetables, like potatoes, can grow at least decently despite the heavy competition put up by ground that has recently been sod.

9/ If Grandpa had tried to grow lettuces or onions or anything else with a delicate root system, they couldn't have held their own against the prairie trying to reassert itself. He planted potatoes because he knew they'd do well.

10/ And now, a 2nd method of converting grass to growing beds

Once winter squash get established, they put out huge leaves effectively robbing the solar collection of any small plant under them, weakening competitors so much that they're not a factor in the health of the squash

11/ Moreover, the squash vines grow fast, creeping farther & farther from their own roots, collecting sunlight from farther afield than most plants have access to.

12/ Squash vines also grow "opportunistic roots"; anywhere the vine sits undusturbed against the ground for a long amount of time it can grow more roots to gather additional water and nutrients.

You can use squashes' strengths to your advantage.

Remove a ~1' circle of sod in a sunny spot of your yard. Now loosen the exposed soil in that hole, removing any roots & rocks you find.

14/ Plant 2 winter squash seeds of your choice in the centre of the circle (varieties that can mature before the end of *your* summer; check the back of the seed pkg for "Days to Maturity").

Water the seeds in well.

15/ If you have compost, or last fall's leaves, or even grass clippings, cover the surface with about 1".

Keeping the surface of the soil covered makes soil life thrive, in part because it helps hold moisture/prevents moisture from evaporating.

16/ If grass or other plants creep into the circle before the squash seedling is able to grow leaves at least 6" in diameter, pull them or at least cut them back (which weakens them).

17/ Once the squash vines have started to "roam", decide where you want to direct them. Coil them around and around the circle as they grow, or guide them across your lawn if you want to encourage them to weaken a larger area of sod.

18/ Drive a stake or other marker into the ground when you plant your squash. It needs to stand taller than 2' or the squash leaves will grow so tall you can't see it. You will likely need to water your squash at some point, & you need to water the spot the seed was planted in.

19/ Wherever the squash leaves shade out, the lawn will be weakened by the end of summer. Probably not killed, but weakened, making it less work to turn that area to diversified vegetable garden the next year.

20/ You can do some "weeding" to enhance this effect. Plants' leaves are their solar panels. Plants need to collect sunlight to live. If you rob them of any solar panels that have managed to find sunlight despite the squash leaves, you weaken them.

21/ You don't need to pull grass roots to ensure the lawn weakens; ripping out grass by hand where it peeks from between squash leaves is easy, helps you feel less like you're letting your yard grow wild, & makes the grass have to spend more energy to grow than it's taking in.

22/ Back to potatoes - here's a potato growing hack you might be able to use.

Traditionally, as I described my grandpa doing it, potatoes are "hilled" with soil you dig.

This is a lot of work.

23/ If you can get old *hay* (the older the better; fresh hay has viable seeds in it), you can hill your potatoes by spreading a 4-6" mat of hay instead.

24/ It is inadvisable to use straw unless you KNOW FOR SURE it's no-spray/organic. Straw is the stalks of a farmer's wheat (or other grain) crop, and in N Am, herbicide is often sprayed on grain to get it to dry out fast for harvest. The herbicide can sometimes hurt your garden.

25/ I'm going to assume you don't have a huge compost pile, but if you do, you can use large amounts of compost to hill potatoes. We use the majority of our compost this way; we rotate the potatoes from row to row each year...

26/ ... and whichever row grows potatoes gets a HUGE dump of compost, while the other rows just get a little. They'll get their turn at having a huge dump of compost as the potato row migrates thru the garden.

27/ Added benefits to mulching potatoes with a thick mat of hay or compost instead of hilling with soil or compost:

The thick layer of organic material keeps soil moisture from evaporating & you might not have to do as much irrigation.

28/ Also, hilling with hay or compost adds organic matter & fertility to the soil, instead of disturbing the nearby soil ecosystem by taking shovelfuls of soil for the hilling.

29/ Soil is an ecosystem. When we disturb it, we do damage to its ability to help regulate the plant ecosystem, including fending off/overcoming certain pest- and disease-impacts.

30/ Back to winter squash.

The video I linked in the first tweet of this thread shows how Red Gardens uses squash to help establish garden beds (or deal with a garden bed that was troublesomely weedy the year before).

31/ If you're converting a lawn, remove 1' wide strips of sod the length of the garden you're creating. The rows should be about 5' apart.

Plant squash down the centre of your 1' wide rows, at whatever spacing is called for on your seed package.