What to do with old Sod...

The sod in our backyard didn't thrive even after 3 years.  We suspect that it was because the sod had so much clay in it.  The clay made it difficult to water deeply.  Also, with the doggie traffic it compacted and made a hard crust.  We decided to dig it up and try growing grass from seed on nice sandy loam soil.  

Smithers is wondering why we're taking his lawn away.

The best way we found to remove the sod is to cut squares with a half moon edger and then use a potato fork to pry the pieces up.  Most of it came up relatively easy because it wasn't rooted down very well.  

It took us several hours to remove it all.  The dogs love the bare dirt.

We intended to take the sod to the dump, but our city dump considers sod "garbage" and charges to dump it by weight.  Sod is very very heavy.  It would have taken 3 or 4 trips in my light pickup truck to get rid of it all.  I thought about composting it in our parking strip, but then we remembered a house several blocks away that used sod to build a raised bed.  

We wanted more space to grow veggies, so we decided to make a raised bed.  The square sod pieces stacked nicely.  We made a bed about 5 feet by 16 feet.

It took us about 2 to 3 hours to haul all the sod from the back yard down to the parking strip.  

The following weekend we made a couple trips to the city TAGRO station to pick up TAGRO potting soil to fill the bed.  TAGRO is Tacoma's way of recycling sewage waste into a useable product.  It took 1 yard and $30 to fill it up.  Later that day we saw a TAGRO delivery truck stop by our bed and the driver got out and said he had to take a pic because customers often ask him what to do with old sod.  

Terry's making rows.

We decided to plant large and sprawling veggies out in the parking strip bed.  Two types of Corn and 5 types of squash.  The corn varieties we planted were Peaches and Cream and Early Sunglow.  The types of squash we're trying are Blue Hubbard, Butternut, Patty Pan Squashes, Buttercup and mystery squashes that sprouted in our compost bin (most likely pumpkin or acorn).  We've never grown squash here so we're excited to see what happens.

What's also great about a sod bed is that when we're all done with it, it can just compost away.