We’ve been working in and around our garden beds for several weeks now and this past weekend, we finally got around to stripping out most of the sod from around the raised, wooden beds.

(Here’s a few posts about the garden, here and here.

I know creating flower or garden beds from scratch can seem daunting, but as someone who has done it countless times before (I spent my summers from age 12 to 22 working for a landscaping business), I am here to tell you that you can definitely DIY it!

(Warning: Flashback photo ahead!)

You don’t even need to rent any equipment, although renting a gas-powered sod stripper would make this job take way less time and energy. Depending on how big of an area you’re working on, I’d consider it. We didn’t for this project, but Hubs is wishing we would have.

He’s tired. As the one who has done most of this, I am also tired, but I’m also less inclined to want to rent machinery since I’ve spent many, many hours of my life already doing this and know it’s possible, free, and the machinery is heavy and hard to operate anyway…

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Decide where you want your bed to be. There are lots of ways to do this. Some people use chalk lines, others use string or rope tied onto stakes, some people use those little flags that sometimes mark where underground utilities are. Others, like myself, usually tend to just eye-ball it. I wouldn’t recommend that if you are going for something perfectly round or square, but for freeform shapes, it’s sometimes the easiest and fastest way to go.

In our case, we had a general idea where we wanted the bed to bed, so we just winged it until we were happy with the general outline. For the most part, we were just wanting a border around the front of the beds.

We plan to use some sort of stone edging for this eventually…

2. Cut along the edge of your bed using an edging tool or sharp shooter to create a small trench to work out from.

Here’s what I mean:

Then, the real work begins.

3. Remove the sod.

There are two main methods for this that I’ve found work pretty well. Both involve a sharp shooter, or a spade, so you’ll want to make sure you aren’t working with just a shovel.

Method one is for when you are doing this by yourself. If that’s the case, you want to lower your body (bend your knees and spread your legs a bit) to get the sharp shooter closer to being parallel with the ground. The lower your handle is to the ground, the easier it is to get a thinner piece of sod (less dirt = less waste to haul away + less heavy = a good thing).

I call this the jab and pop method, which is confusing, but there will be a video at the end. You want to jab the sharp shooter into the front edge of the sod you’re wanting to remove.

Unlike when you’re shoveling, don’t immediately pry up the piece you are working on. Instead, try to pop the sod loose a bit by quickly pushing the handle of the sharp shooter down to the ground. Then remove the sharp shooter and move to the left or right the width of the sharp shooter and repeat. Now you have two sharp shooter widths of loose sod, but they are still attached together. Pretty soon, you’ll have big chunks!

I like to two or three or four passes in the same location so I can get the full length of the sharp shooter under the sod to remove a larger section. (This will all be easier to understand with the video, just bear with me on this.)

The idea of this technique is to get as big of pieces as you can. If it breaks apart, it’s not a big deal, it’s just easier to keep the depth of sod you are removing even by using big pieces and not just chopping it all up in tiny pieces, like the one below.

Also, if you are wanting to “reuse” this sod somewhere else (we’ll get to that in a bit) bigger pieces are easier to lay  down, water, and keep alive.

Here’s a video to help you understand what in the world I’m talking about:

For method two, you’ll need two people.

The person with the sharpshooter will work exactly like described above, only there will also be a partner on the ground to “roll up” the sod as you move along.

It sounds weird, but here’s how it works. I make a few initial jabs and pops, popping up a line of sod about 12 or 18 inches across. I wouldn’t go much wider than this or it will be harder to work with, and heavier, and more likely to break apart.

Then, your partner, in my case, Hubs, rolls that line back on itself and I go again, making jabs and pops all the way to where I stopped the first time. Then, Hubs rolls that loosening sod back and I go again. Here’s one of our finished rolls:

Depending on how many inches you are gaining with each jab, I’d recommend doing this process five or six times until you have a small little roll. Then, make a few cuts with the sharpshooter to “break” the sod roll from the sod still in the ground and have your partner lift that roll away, stack it, then get ready to go again.

Note: This method is dangerous! Make sure you have good aim with the sharp shooter and don’t just wack at the ground near your partner’s fingers. Also, the partner should NEVER move their hands while you are digging! Be warned, this is not for beginners! Practice makes perfect, but this won’t be fun if one of you ends up missing a finger.

Here’s how our rolls turned out:

After you remove all the sod, you’re free to reuse it so find a dead spot in your yard, rough up the soil and lay the sod down as neatly as you can. Then, walk it in, and soak it. After soaking it, walk on it again to really press it into the ground.

It will look something like this when you first put it down:

I know it’s not much yet, but if it lives, it will soon look way better. I’ll be back with an update on ours soon to show you how it’s doing.

You especially want to press the seams down as much as possible to keep there from being big visible cracks.

Also, water, water, water! As in soak the sod every day until it takes off. Or do this the week before 3 major rainstorms, as we lucked into.

So there you have it, how to strip sod and make a garden bed or flower bed from scratch. I’d love to hear about your yard work. What’s going on in your world?

Note: While we were doing this, I greatly missed my “dream team” friends from the work days we spent doing this. I wish we all lived closer! Miss you girls, even the ones not pictured above–that was just one of the oldest photos I could find!