Turning a grub filled lawn into the beginnings of a food forest: flip, lasagna or til?

I have the goal of turning my sloped front yard into the foundation of a food forest this spring.  My wife and I k ow where we want to swail and have started acquiring some hardy and diverse perennial flowers and shrubs.

My lawn has grubs that I am am thinking to use nemetoads to deal with.  Can anyone speak to their effectiveness?

If I am going to plant out onto the swails this year, what method of yard treatment (or maybe a mixture) is recommended.  For the swails I was going to flip the sod, add top soil and then mulch with wood chip.  For other parts of the yard I was going to put down cardboard and a couple inches of wood chip to kill/compost the grass.  My neighbor also approached me and said I could borrow his rototiller to turn over the lawn and then just mulch on top.

I'm basically in a state of analysis paralysis here and would appreciate any guidance.

Cheers, Mike

I also want to add that I have 8 yards of loam that I can put to use here

Can you give more info?  I think this is one of those situations where I don't have enough information to be able to make a recommendation, and one where if you provide more info, you will likely get much more useful responses.

Where are you (at least share what specific climate are you in)? Include if it's windy in your area.

What is the amount of sun exposure on the area, in hours of direct sunlight and direction?

How sloped is the area, and is it evenly sloped (relatively)?

Where does the major water runoff come from, how much water runs off the slope, where does it go and how frequently does this happen?

What type of soil do you have in that location?  How deep is the topsoil? (If I were there, I would go out and dig with a shovel in a few places to find this out.)

Is the area fenced, or fenceable?

Do you want or have any animals that could utilize this space?

Can you post a picture of the spot?

Does your neighborhood have any restrictions or requirements that could apply to your property?

What is your dream of how you'd like to be able to enjoy that portion of your land? How do you envision it in the future? Can you post a picture of what you are aiming for?

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the response, I will try to answer your questions the best I can.

I am in south eastern NH, zone 5a/b depending on who you ask

I abutt a pond so my soil is sandy about 1-2 ft down depending where you dig

The front yard is about 180 ft long and up to 80 ft wide. There is a relatively steady slope for the first 100ft then it is level.  The slope is coming down from the street, so that is where my runoff comes from

We are in the process of designing swails to make the best use of the water

At this time we do not plan on having animals, at least not on this part of the yard.

The sun exposure is good, it is on the north side of the house, however it gets morning and afternoon sun. Enough that the previous owners had full sun plants in the area that seemed to do well.

The area is not fenced and I do not plan on fencing at this point in time.

Ideally this will be a no grass area that I re mulch with wood chip as needed annually or bi annually.  I understand that this is a large endeavor so I also plan to have creeping thyme as groundcover for the time being.

I want to have fruit trees, some bushes (flowering and fruit) with pollinating perennials and some annuals where there is space

Their used to be 3 large crab apples. They were overgrown and had carpenter ants so I cut them down myself.

Any thoughts on what to do with the stumps? I'd like to plant around them next year

That area looks like it is good for what you are wanting to do. And your plan is a good one.

Kim asked some thorough and great questions.

Your wood chip idea is great as wood chips will add so much to your plan, especially if you have access to a lot of them.

Best wishes for your future food forest.

What do you think is the best way to remove the grass though?

I am worried about doing the cardboard and wood chip method as I will still be left with grubs that will eat the roots of my perrebials.  Do you think this will be an issue.

I am looking at getting beneficial nemetoads

Regarding how to remove the grass, or turn the grass into soil - I've found it depends on the grass. Some grass is so persistent that even going over it with thick layers of things won't stop it. Other grass is not.

With grass that is highly persistent, I dig it up first, then mulch or cover over it. The sort of grass I'm talking about has long rhizomes or runners. If you pull it up, there will be long strands of root like stem underground fanning out and sometimes downwards. Bermuda grass is a good example of this type of vigorous grass.

With grass like that, any little piece of it will sprout anew.

Maybe instead you have a grass of the sort that makes turf, or a mass of fine root hairs that can decompose into soil over time? If so, you may be able to layer over it if that's what you'd like to do.

As for the grubs, they eat and decompose the grass. To me, that would be a desirable thing. An example of "the problem is the solution", as is often said in permaculture circles. I'd let the grubs do the work of transforming the turf into soil. In the meantime, I'd plant things that were tolerant of the grubs and let those plants start helping develop the soil as well. I'd focus more on annuals initially, and add in a few perennials once I felt I had the swales working well.

What I mean by the swales working well - that the swales are successfully collecting and infiltrating water and not leading to runoff.

It may not seem "permaculture" to start with annuals, but it can be.  I would use fast growing annuals, like marigolds and bachelor button for example, to help develop the soil, hold the soil in place, and be a part of a succession into perennials.  Bugs don't like to eat either of those plants very much, and bachelor button has a deep taproot. Other annuals I use for soil development are buckwheat, coreopsis, cosmos, decorative amaranths (like love lies bleeding). There are many attractive annuals that apply to this use of soil development.

One more thing.  I'm focused on soil development in the case of transforming lawn to planting beds because I've done a lot of that over the years, and killed a TON of perennials.  So many plants died due to my not overcoming the grass first.  Even vigorous perennial plants, bulbs, things that I was told were "invasive" - swallowed up by the grass which grew so much more efficiently in the space it had been established.   Lasagna gardening didn't work at my site unless I was committed to hours of weeding each week in summer, on account of the very assertive rhizome grasses.

Over time, I learned that soil development was the most important thing for my site.  Perennials need a good space underground to set down roots.  If the root space is used up by grass, it seems to stunt or overtake many/most perennials.

Now I'm in the desert SW and there is so little root competition compared to a wetter climate. It's made starting a garden many, many times easier than I was accustomed to.  The lessons I learned in Oregon about soil development still apply and are a big part of my success here in the desert as well.