Due to an away-from-home job I had for the last ten years of my career, I let our garden go back-to-nature, which means it totally became covered with local turf-grasses, a mix of crab-grass, nut-grass, and KR bluestem. It was like it had never been anything other.
With retirement and this current virus I found a desire to garden again and since my garden area is fenced-in with cyclone fencing to keep deer out it is unsuitable for tractor-work.
Six weeks ago I used my walk-behind tiller to turn it over, waited four days letting the exposed grasses die-out, and did it again. I used the ridiculous little “middlebuster” blade that tiller came with to make rows and planted tomato seedlings, pepper seedlings, cucumbers seedlings, seed corn, beans, squash, and beans, and a row of okra. I put a shovel-full of manure around the tomatoes, cukes, and squash, and sprayed Miracle-Grow on the rest after they sprouted. That was 4 weeks ago.
They’re now 3 feet tall and producing tomatoes and squash and the rest (except the corn) are fully flowering ( The corn is 3’ tall surrounded by the beans and squash as I planted those in the same rows a-la Native American. The okra is about 10” up now, being a bit slower, it’s not producing flowers yet).
It’s a beautiful garden again (and the asparagus at the north-end, now 5’ tall, never quit throughout the ten year fallow-period but it’s invaded with johnson-grass and DW promises to hand-weed those. We’ll cut it back afterward and will enjoy new shoots later in a fall-garden.). I’ve used pickling-vinegar as a weed-control in the asparagus many years ago and will likely treat any new johnson-grass pop-ups as they occur.
Anyway... I’ll bet you can use a tiller to turn/chop that turf and let it return nutrients to the soil and have a garden planted in a week and not lose that valuable topsoil. Go for it!
