How to turn your front lawn into a vegetable garden

If you’d like to replace your lawn, or part of it, with a vegetable garden, first check with your homeowner’s association (if you have one) or local municipality to ensure you won’t run afoul of any rules or laws. Consider sharing your plans with neighbors so as not to catch them by surprise.  

1. Decide where to place vegetable beds. Ensure the area gets at least six hours of direct sunlight daily, which most edibles require. Consider trimming overhead trees if necessary.

2. If you’re using raised beds, you can place them on top of existing grass. Fill low beds with good-quality topsoil and compost. For structures 3 or more feet deep: fill the bottom one-third with firewood or logs from cut trees (never use pressure-treated wood, as it contains chemicals), add a layer of branches, sticks and twigs, and top with equal amounts of topsoil and compost, moistening each layer as you build it. Top with topsoil and compost as the fill settles.

3. For in-ground gardens, decide how large and what shape you’d like your beds to be. Keeping their width at or less than 4 feet will ensure weeding, pruning, securing and harvesting remain within arm’s reach from all sides. Sketch your plan on graph paper.

4. “Draw” your bed’s outline on the grass with white flour (fill a large zipper-top plastic bag with flour, clip off one of the bottom corners and sprinkle to define the area) or lay rope or a garden hose on the ground.

5. Next, remove grass and other vegetation within your defined borders. If you’re planting crops this season, use a sod cutter or grub hoe, then lightly till the soil 12 inches deep, mixing in a generous helping of compost, which will improve the drainage of clay, increase the water-holding capacity of sand and enrich the soil with beneficial nutrients. Be sure to remove any large rocks you unearth.

6. If you are preparing a bed now for next year, layer cardboard over the entire area, hose it down well and cover it with at least 6 inches of compost or a combination of compost and high-quality soil. Within a few months, the lawn will be dead, the cardboard decomposed — and your back preserved.

7. Before planting, test the soil’s pH using a home test kit, available at most garden centers, or by bringing a soil sample to the Cornell Cooperative Extension office nearest you. (For instructions, hours and more, call 516-832-2591 in Nassau; 631-727-4126 in Suffolk.)

8. Research the recommended pH for the crops you want to plant. Most edibles will grow well at a pH level between 6.0 and 6.5. Some will tolerate higher or lower levels; blueberries are an exception, requiring acidic soil with a reading between 4.5 and 5. If the pH is too low (acidic), incorporate dolomitic lime into the soil according to the package directions. If it’s too high (alkaline), amend the soil with a soil acidifier containing elemental sulfur.

9. Incorporate a slow-release, balanced fertilizer that contains nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium into the soil before planting. If you’ve been fertilizing a grass lawn, use a product that does not contain nitrogen, as it will already be present in the soil (and too much could adversely affect crop production).

Note: If you’ve applied synthetic fertilizers (or other treatments) to the lawn, your crops will not be organic. It typically takes three years for those products to fade from the soil.