Grass is just about everywhere, and it’s really good at outcompeting other plants. So for those of us who want to create natural, native spaces, grasses can be a challenge. One way to deal with grass (as well as other undesired vegetation) is to spray it with a herbicide—several times over the course of the growing season to get a good kill. But if you want to avoid multiple chemical applications, another option is to starve the grass of sunlight. All you need is a tarp and some stakes. Mow down the area you want to convert to a native garden, stake a tarp over that area, and wait a year. (I recommend using a green tarp to minimize any eyesore for you or your neighbors.) Pretty much everything under the tarp will die, leaving a blank canvas for planting your natives.
On the left is the newly seeded bare ground that was covered with a tarp in 2020, and on the right is the tarp to prep another patch of ground for 2021.
I did my first “tarp kill” last fall after getting the idea from—wait for it—a t-shirt company in Iowa. After a hot summer of baking in the sun, I found a nice piece of bare ground when I removed the tarp a month ago. That gave me a perfect spot to sow multiple types of milkweed, prairie blazing star, blue mistflower (shown above), and other native seeds I’ve been collecting from my field lately. Because these are native wildflowers that are wind-dispersed, you don’t need to dig holes for them, or fertilize them, or otherwise make a fuss. Just sprinkle them over the cleared area and let nature take its course. You can always walk over the area to press them into the ground if you’re worried about the wind blowing them away, but the freeze-thaw cycles of winter will do most of the work.
Butterfly weed seeds ready to transfer to my native garden space.
The size of your tarp determines the size of your garden, and you can make a pretty significant native space this way if you’re looking to convert a piece of your suburban lawn. On the other hand, this method may not work for larger properties, which may require prescribed burns or herbicides to convert in a timely manner. I’m going to keep overseeding my pasture with natives to slowly reintroduce biodiversity, and in the meantime I’ll expand this area each year, one tarp at a time. I can’t wait to see what it looks like in a couple years, and I’m excited for the opportunity to provide a little Eden for my honey bees, the native pollinators, and other wildlife.