In recent years, there has been a trend toward replacing lawns with gravel, wood chips, and xeriscaping to use less water. There are numerous resources and websites out there that explain how to choose a replacement ground cover, arrange plants, setup an efficient irrigation system, etc. But there’s very little out there on the actual removal of the lawn itself.
A month or so ago Brian and I decided to remove our 540 sq. ft. or so of dying grass and replace it with gravel. I quickly discovered that there are two options for removing sod: with a sod cutter or with a shovel and your hands. Renting a sod cutter requires a truck, and sadly we couldn’t track one done. That left us with option number two. My guess is that most people go with option number one or they pay someone to get rid of the lawn and don’t worry about this stuff.
I wish we were most people because option two was hard and tiring. It took two days at the end of which I couldn’t move. My advice is to water a few hours before you start. You want the lawn wet, but if it’s too wet, the sod becomes very, very heavy and difficult to move.
Dig in with a gardening shovel. Use the shovel to break up the sod into pieces that are about one foot by two feet. Get under each piece with the shovel and loosen it up from the ground. Grab a hold of each piece and lift it up. Each piece will be heavy; remember to lift with your legs and all that jazz. Then you’ll need somewhere to move the. I really hope you thought about this before you started tearing up the lawn. Keep in mind that you’ll end up with a lot of sod and dirt that will be very heavy. We stuck ours in our giant compost pile which began to break under the pressure.
If you can enlist some help, this is the step where you’ll need it the most. Grab some beer and call your friends. Better yet… make a friend with a truck and just rent the sod cutter.
Once you’ve got all of the sod up and out, you’ll need to decide what you want to do. If you want plant in the area, I’d recommend you follow these directions on You Grow Girl.
If you want to be lazy like us and go with gravel or wood chips, lay down some weed barrier and top the area off with the material of your choice. That’s it, and it’s great for dogs and kids.
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