Quick and Easy Sod Removal
August 28th, 2005 
by Susan Harris
Sorry about the boring photo but it’s to illustrate a common gardening project - sod removal. Here I’ve recently removed about 20 square yards of sod in order to enlarge a border. And why enlarge the border? Because there’s nothing evergreen along the whole length of it so I hate it all winter when I need cheering up the most. The expansion will give me room for the new Hollywood Juniper I’ll be buying soon, the 5 pieris I bought in April for $3 each, a nice leucothoe that’s looking for a better home, and maybe some nandina.
So back to sod removal. Our email group recently had a spirited discussion of this topic and I want to add my two cents. What worked for this project was to 1) create the new line using a warm garden hose, 2) mark the line after I’ve tweaked it with marking paint, 3) slice along the new edge using a flat-bottomed shovel, 4) cut through and slice under the sod at random places, and 5) lift sod chunks with a trowel and shake off the loose soil. Steps 3-5 took about 2 hours in total and it was easy work. I added the discarded sod to the leaves in my compost pile.
So you might give this technique a try when you don’t want to wait months for newspaper or plastic sheeting to slowly kill the grass. I know impatience is a terrible flaw we all wrestle with as gardeners, but sometimes it’s really okay.
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September 5th, 2005 at 8:24 pm
From my original site: Sandy recommended renting a sod remover for $40 and getting it done in 20 minutes. She despises digging up turf. Mrs. Wilson said sod removers are as easy as pie. She added a 150-foot bed and it took 1/2 hour to remove the sod. Next came the rototiller and “bam, it was done.” She rented it from a power tools store.
Zoey said she removes sod the same way I do, and Joe said this is exactly the way he increased the size of his beds, adding that “grass makes great compost.”