It is possible to create a no dig garden bed on top of vigorous Auckland kikuyu grass!  I was initially very skeptical, but after lots of googling (thank you Charles Dowding) and referring to my gardening bible The Edible Backyard by Kath Irvine, I thought I’d give it a go.

First of all, mark out the area where the bed will go.  I was extending an existing garden bed out about 1 metre. 

Mow the grass down as low as you can go.  

Now put down a really thick layer of cardboard.  Removing all the tape and stickers from the cardboard was the longest part of this whole process. I tried to get at least 3 layers of thick cardboard.  As I inevitably ran out of cardboard, I then used newspaper (at least 10 pages thick,) old cotton t -shirts and sheep wool to help form a thick barrier. 

Then I dug a trench to re-install my lawn edging – in hindsight I should have done this before putting the cardboard down. I reused the existing wooden garden edging roll and dug it in so that 15cms would be above the ground and about 10cms below.  I really don’t trust kikuyu so wanted to have a barrier under the ground as well.

Thoroughly wet the cardboard, and then cover it with soil.  I also put pea straw, lawn clippings, worm casings  and compost into this layer.  My garden soil is sand so it needs all the extra organic matter it can get!  

Then I applied a 10cms thick layer of mulch.  I deliberately mulched before planting because in this case it was easier to scrape back the mulch to plant a seedling than try to mulch around a lot of seedlings.

The garden was fully mulched on 19th October.  Its now 4th March and I haven’t pulled a single weed out of the no-dig part.  There is some kikuyu incursion from the lawn through the garden edging at the front, I think this is because I re-used the garden edging and it got knocked around a bit so its not totally straight and there are some decent gaps in the slats.  I’m managing this by weed eating the lawn edge more that I usually would and just pulling out any bits of kikuyu that make it through the edge – as they are so tiny its easy to stay on top of.

The plants are all loving it and have grown on really well. I’ll be using this method again to extend out the other side of the garden too!

Please give me a call on 021 08506842 if you’d like us to make a no-dig garden for you!