Parking Strip Redo

So if you've been by our house lately, you might be wondering WTF is up with our parking strip garden.  Well... apparently we can't leave well enough alone.  The raised beds edged with repurposed sod served us well for the past three years, but we are tired of trimming the grass both on the bed edges and between the beds.  Also, because the sod had rhizomatous grasses and weeds in it, the good garden soil was slowly being invaded creating more weeding work for us.  So, Terry insisted that we rid ourselves of the sod.  The plan is to remove the sod bed edges, spread the sod out, sheet mulch over the sod with cardboard, enlarge the beds with more soil, and mulch everything else with wood chips.

We started off by measuring the parking strip and sketching out the new bed configuration.  Then, we edged the sidewalk because the grass had grown over it.  Next, we measured and marked out the new beds corners with pin flags.  Then we started to pick away the current sod bed edges.  This is perhaps the most labor intensive part of the project.  It's pretty clear that things are going to look horrible until we complete this project.  We need to collect a ton of cardboard, order 12 yards of soil, and find an arborist to drop a load of wood chips.  Also we need to do all this soon, we can getting planting.

I'd like to note that, beds edged with sod isn't necessarily a bad way to go, if you only have a small area to manage.  I had suggested that we cover the sod beds with black plastic during Winter to weaken the grass and warm the soils before each growing season.  However, Terry had already made up his mind that the sod had to go.  Plus, he wanted more planting space.  So that explains the mess and the pin flags...

If you are interested in growing a garden in your parking strip, the city of Tacoma has some guidelines.  You can find information on this at Gardensphere in Proctor.