# New garden spot...breaking virgin ground



## MTplainsman (Oct 12, 2007)

I will be creating a new garden spot this year. I realize with my heavy clay soil, I'd need to add manure and other conditioners as well as letting break down all summer and winter for next year. I need to know though, how would you folks go about preparing the ground for breaking up the new bed? Would you cut the grass off real short and spray Roundup? Is it best to let the short grass grow a little bit before spraying for effectiveness? What is the best wat to go about preparing for a new garden??? Thanks for any help. Joel


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## dahliaqueen (Nov 9, 2005)

Please never spray Roundup on your property. Contrary to what is printed on the bottle, it does not break down quickly and you will contaminate your soil and your beautiful veggies.

That said, i have prepared beds the easy way-in the fall, cut the grass short, spread manure, lime , gypsum for clay soil conditioning,whatever is necessary, then just separate hay bales into 6" or thicker slices and lay them tight up against each other.
Wet the hay thoroughly after you lay them out- they will degrade nicely and add to the fertility of your plot. When you are ready to plant, pull them off and either use them as mulch(this is always my choice- rip them apart and fluff up a bit) or put around fruit trees or in compost pile.
Your garden will be ready to plant the next spring- you do not need to plow and there will be millions of earthworms.


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## Callieslamb (Feb 27, 2007)

off and pile it to the side. If you have a tractor, you can blade it off. It kind of depends on what is growing there now and how large of an area. I have to deal with bermuda grass and YES, I use round up!!!! It doesn't always kill all vegetation totally so I recommend scraping or using a sod cutter. Then using round up on what else grows up. I cover the scraped soil and let it compost down, then add it to the garden later. I have horribly clay soil. But no rocks, I remind myself. This year, I just used my shovel to take off 300 sq ft of sod. I don't recommend that. At all!


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Time frame would be too short to use Roundup. Although it would be virtually gone within a month if used on pure grass, there could be enough residual in some of the thicker roots of perennial weeds to affect tender seedlings. The best time to have used something like that would have been August or September to give it time to become totally harmless.

If the sod is normal lawn grass, you can rototill it and kill probably 95% of it. Stripping the sod will also kill the same 95% but the soil will have lost the nutrients which the sod is holding. 

If your grass is a normal pasture grass or native grasses, best would be to turn it under with a regular plow. Tilling would chew them up OK but you'd have one year of diligent hoeing to finish them off. My primary plot was quack grass and Canada thistles and plowed under in fall of 2005. Kept me slightly busy in 2006 hoeing off anything that I didn't want. Entirely free of any perennial weeds in 2007. 

Martin


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## PyroDon (Jul 30, 2006)

Cover it with black plastic and carpet right now , leave that for a moth or two , uncover and turn with your amendments recover and cut holes where you want plants wont be perfect but will get some plants up.
I have a 20x30 piece of EPDM heavy black rubber roofing want to kill off a section of weed just cover the area with it for a few weeks and it will cook them . arent many plants that survive 160+ degrees


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## dahliaqueen (Nov 9, 2005)

PyroDon said:


> Cover it with black plastic and carpet right now , leave that for a moth or two , uncover and turn with your amendments recover and cut holes where you want plants wont be perfect but will get some plants up.
> I have a 20x30 piece of EPDM heavy black rubber roofing want to kill off a section of weed just cover the area with it for a few weeks and it will cook them . arent many plants that survive 160+ degrees


I have used this method also- not entirely organic because of unknown/fire retardant chemicals in carpeting and chemical breakdown of plastic ...a compromise, to be sure....sigh

I always try to find ways to avoid using gasoline powered machinery on my land, and these low-tech methods are also the least labor intensive. Leaves more time to play with the dog and make art. :baby04:


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## chickenista (Mar 24, 2007)

I moved in June and had to plant a garden FAST. I took lawn and turned it garden with newspaper, the boxes from moving and deep mulch techniques. It did fantastic. I just layerd sheets of newspaper about three sheets thick. I went over it with the cardboard boxes. Cut holes through where I wanted seedlings to go.. and whe they established a bit and grew some ..I covered the whole are in old straw! Fantastic. I have more beds in the lawn layed out that way now, just waiting to be planted when the time comes... except on these new beds I had compost to layer in too.


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## Stephen in SOKY (Jun 6, 2006)

If I read correctly, you're preaparing a new garden for 2009? If so, you have plenty of time for repeated applications of roundup to kill any vegetation there now. I respect those who choose not to use it, but this would seem to be the best answer to me. Address each round of grass/weeds as they germinate throughout summer 2008 as roundup will not kill seeds that have not germinated. A little AMS helps roundup immensely.


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## DianeWV (Feb 1, 2007)

Plow it and disc it or you can plow and rototill. On first year ground breaking, heavy discs seem to chop up the grass and roots better. The rototiller of course works the soil real nice but you might have to fight the grass clumps the first year. For me, plow, disc, then till on new ground is what I do personally.


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## dahliaqueen (Nov 9, 2005)

Research on RoundUp's Toxicity--Part I

Ingestion of RoundUp has been shown to cause "irritation of the oral mucous membrane and gastrointestinal tractâ¦pulmonary dysfunction, oliguria, metabolic acidosis, hypotension, leukocytosis and fever."

Monsanto's own toxicologist, Rebecca Tominack, participated in this study.

(Tominack RL, Yang GY, Tsai WJ, Chung HM, Deng JF, 1991. Taiwan National Poison Center survey of glyphosate-surfactant herbicide ingestions. J Toxicol Clin Toxicol 1991; 29 (1): 91-109)
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Many people report experiencing severe digestive problems related to irritation of their gastrointestinal tract after overexposure to RoundUp, limiting the foods their bodies will tolerate to a very few bland foods.

This is believed to be related to the fact that in a 1983 study by Heitanen, Linnainmaa and Vainio, RoundUp's main ingredient, glyphosate, was shown to decrease the hepatic level level of cytochrome P-450, monooxygenase activities, and the intestinal activity of aryl hydrocarbon hydroxylase.
RoundUp causes damage to the liver that inhibits the liver's ability to process toxic substances.

Research subject animals injected with glyphosate evidenced a depressed function of the liver. "Glyphosate decreased the hepatic function of cytochrome P-450 and monoxygnease activities and the intestinal activity of aryl hydrocarbon hydrolase." (Heitanen et al, 1983). The P-450 enzyme system is one of the main body systems for detoxifying harmful chemicals. When it becomes impaired by those same chemicals it is supposed to be detoxifying, the effects of a given chemical on the body increase dramatically.

(Heitanen, et al., 1983. Effects of phenoxyherbicides and glyphosate on the hepatic and intestinal biotransformation activities in the rat. Acta Pharmacol Toxicol (Copenh) 1983 Aug; 53(2):103-12.)
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RoundUp was found to cause significant DNA damage to erythrocytes (red blood cells) in a study done in 1997 by Clements, Ralph and Petras. RoundUp's surfactant, POEA, is known to cause haemolysis.

(Clements C, Ralph S, Pertas M, 1997. Genotoxicity of select herbicides in Rana catesbeiana tadpoles using the alkaline single-cell gel DNA electrophoresis (comet) assay. Environ Mol Mutagen 1997; 29(3):277-288.)
.................................

A recent study by eminent oncologists Dr. Lennart Hardell and Dr. Mikael Eriksson of Sweden [1], has revealed clear links between one of the world's biggest selling herbicide, glyphosate, to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of cancer [2].

In the study published in the 15 March 1999 Journal of American Cancer Society, the researchers also maintain that exposure to glyphosate 'yielded increased risks for NHL.' They stress that with the rapidly increasing use of glyphosate since the time the study was carried out, 'glyphosate deserves further epidemiologic studies.'

Glyphosate, commonly known as Roundup, is the world's most widely used herbicide. It is estimated that for 1998, over a 112,000 tonnes of glyphosate was used world-wide. It
indiscriminately kills off a wide variety of weeds after application and is primarily used to control annual and perennial plants.
http://www.naturescountrystore.com/roundup/index.html


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

dahliaqueen said:


> Ingestion of RoundUp has been shown to cause "irritation of the oral mucous membrane and gastrointestinal tractâ¦pulmonary dysfunction, oliguria, metabolic acidosis, hypotension, leukocytosis and fever."


Last that I've heard, Roundup is supposed to be applied to vegetation growing in the ground, not to be taken orally. Haven't heard that it's good for anything growing in a person's digestive tract! 

Martin


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