Dealing with Grass in the Garden and Spacing of Plants

It is easy to create a grass-free space, to begin with, by covering your gardening areas with a few overlapping layers of cardboard, paper bags, or thick layers of newspaper, whichever is most available. Hold them down with sticks and maybe topsoil, and mulch with woodchips. Never use plywood. Time and the lack of sunlight will kill the grass and its roots.

Around the edge of your garden, dig a small trench which you could fill with a log, or you can buy various types of garden borders that will fit down into the earth far enough to block grass roots. Another option is to plant a border of comfrey or another plant with thick rhizomes to block the grass. The shade created by comfrey or other heavily leafed plants will also help prevent grasses.

Permaculture gardening is one of the easiest ways to keep grass from taking back over your veggie spaces. With permaculture, you are not concerned about crowding (though you do want to consider the room needed by the full grown plant.) Indeed, you want to take advantage of all the energy from photosynthesis you can direct into your soil with an abundance of plant life, most weeds included (you can chop off the flowers they produce if you wish and drop them on the soil.) Plants in nature do not crowd each other out; they coexist and improve the soil for each other. There are few weeds that should be removed.

Grass, even shade tolerant grass, requires four to six hours of sunlight a day--at least dappled light. So abundant leafy plants side by side, right to the edge of your garden, and a mulch covering your soil will really help to keep the grass from taking hold. Problem solved!