Sheet mulch an area - PEM BB gardening.sand.sheetmulch

Minimum requirements:
 - Starting with turf or untended weedy growth
 - Area of at least 60 square feet
 - Minimum of a smother layer with heavy mulch on top.  More layers or materials is fine.
 - No bagged mulches
       - Delivered mulch is ok
 - Foraged cardboard or newspaper is fine
      - Remove all tape, stickers and staples
 - Minimum of 4" of heavy mulch (wood chips, wet leaves, rotted hay/straw, heavy chop/drop, etc)

Provide proof of the following as pictures or video (<2 min):
 - The area prior to sheet mulching
 - Smother layer in place
 - Mulch layer in place showing thickness
 - Prove 60 square feet if it isn't obvious

I created a raised bed garden (shown in another BB) but still wanted more space. I made the decision to turn the lawn that is directly behind my house into more gardening space. The logic I had is that I dislike mowing grass #1, I could create a polyculture/pollinator in this area to benefit ALL of my gardens #2, and I may of had an abundance of wood chips that needed to be utilized #3.

I have access to lengths of kraft paper that would otherwise going into a waste stream. I collected enough to attempt to do an overlapped smother zone. I had great success with cardboard in my raised garden beds but I wasn't sure if the paper would be thick enough. I laid down the paper and held it in place with gardening staples that I had acquired somehow. Without the paper being able to move, I moved wheelbarrow full after wheelbarrow full of ramial chips that an arborist friend had given me. These chips were probably 60% Siberian Elm/40% Pine. Once I had that in place I hacked down the Japanese Barberry tick magnet plant, utilized several applications of boiling water on the roots, extra smother layer/wood chips/raised bed that is intended for garlic and to make sure that barberry never comes back.

I took the picture of the measurement of my chip depth with it settled after months and am proud to say I hit the 4" mark. I am pretty sure I layered it somewhere from 8"-10" deep. I had a LOT of chips to get out of the middle of my lawn.

I have a series of images from 2021 that satisfy this except that I wasn't trying to document the depth of the composted wood chips that I put down. But I do have these images and some showing a successful fully-grown corn patch. Would you eyeball that and accept it or reject it for not having a ruler stuck in it? (And is it cheating to pre-ask like this or should I be submitting and risking the BBV penalty since I'm making you look at it?) If you think that is good enough, then I'll edit this post up into a submission.

I think you'd need to show the depth and also the pic of the area before you started.  

To your other question, it's "semi cheating" but since PEM is early in it's adoption, I'm fine with a few questions here and there :)

I sheet mulched an area where I would like to have a garden.

Before


Cardboard harvested from work


Aged wood chips


I think this is obviously more than 60sqft. That shovel is about 5', so maybe 175sqft.


Almost 5"

OK, I sheet-mulched a new area where I'd like to have a garden. I picked a place that would widen this year's garlic bed. I started this on 13 March during a "heat-wave", but found all my bales of spoiled hay frozen through the core and stuck to the ground and each other. So I got back out to finish it up today.

Provide proof of the following as pictures or video (<2 min):
- The area prior to sheet mulching
- Smother layer in place
- Mulch layer in place showing thickness
- Prove 60 square feet if it isn't obvious

The area math looks like this: 102 + 190 = 292 inches long x 37.75 inches wide = 11023 sq in ÷ 144 sq in / sq ft = 76.44 sq ft

The mulch is spoiled hay everywhere with sticks and corn stalks here and there on top.

Oops! I was correctly penalized for tape and labels just above. I think the segment of the above submission tied to the Builder Board was OK, so I really just need to add ten more square feet and show the ground I'm sheeting over. This patch is just a few feet from yesterday's bed. The ground has long and unkempt grass present with hawkweed, dandelions, creeping charlie, sheep sorrel, etc. but the grass is mostly what's visible. The blackish patches were little mounds of compost that I grew potatoes in last year. I'm not mulching over those spots, but merging into them.

67" x 101" = 47 sq ft -- way more than I needed as make-up space.