We’re gradually getting rid of our lawn, too. Only in our case, we’re replacing it with beds. We like plants, just not grass. I hate grass.
The Roundup will reduce the grass to forest transition by about three months. Then all you have to do is wait for the next 99 years.
The first thing I did when I got this house was to get rid of the grass.
- Mow close on a hot day.
- Rent equipment to peel up the turf (omit this step if you’re concerned about the integrity of a hillside).
- Cover with thick black plastic and allow to bake for the rest of the season (or, if you want to, cover with thick landscape fabric and then dump in a load of topsoil and compost or bark mulch).
- After a while (say, fall), if you didn’t turf it, take up the plastic and put down a heavyish landscape fabric. Plant by cutting Xs in it and tucking the ends down. If you did turf it, take up the plastic and mulch it.
- In fall or spring (depending on your climate, sow native wildflower seed (run some rows of topsoil for this if you mulched).
We still get stray clumps of grass from our former lawn and the neighbors’ yards, but mostly we have low-maintenance, low-water plantings with mulch and stepping stone paths running through them.
Forestry professional checking in here. If you do nothing at all to your yard space, nature will take it over through a process botanists and ecologists call succession. It operates a little more slowly in your climate than in warmer and wetter ones, but it will still do the trick.
That said, you should keep in mind that living in the middle of the woods means that some day you have a pretty good chance of being in the way of a forest fire. These are rare events in the U.P., but they can occur. This year extended drought in south Georgia allowed part of the Okeefenokee Swamp to catch fire. It burned for a few weeks.
So, get rid of your lawn but not defensible space around your home. See this site - - http://www.firewise.org/ - - for basic information.
If I were you, I’d invest in some landscape cloth. Cover parts of your yard you no longer want, peg it down, cut a hole in it, plant a plant you want, put mulch over the cloth. The cloth will prevent the grass from getting enough light to grow but will allow water to get into the soil.
Missed the edit window and **Shoshana’s ** message on preview. Great minds think alike… or fools seldom differ. Or a great mind and a fool agree. Whatever. Good luck.
I know someone who killed off their lawn with weed and feed. I’m not sure if it was the herbicide or the fertilizer that burnt it? But I imagine that if you over-fertilize the grass you could very feasibly “burn it” and get rid of it with zero environmental effect.
Thanks to all the responses.
It seems we’re on the right track by planting wildflower plugs and doing nothing. Yay!
I’m loath to rototill/blacktarp/etc. because like I said in the OP, we are getting the wild plant cover naturally, just slower than I’d like. It seems like if we just keep going this way we’ll get our meadow without having to do much more.
And yes, Ivorybill, we’re not going to let the trees come right up to the house. We’re thinking more along the lines of “woodland meadow” not “deciduous forest.” I have been pulling up the lil treelettes that keep popping up. Also, I forgot to mention - it’s not like we’re in the middle of the forest itself. We’re actually in town. There’s a Target a 1.5 minute drive away. We’re not going to get in the path of a forest fire unless it’s the type of forest fire that threatens the whole damn town (which I suppose can happen, but I’m guessing it’d be exceedingly rare.)
1)Kill the grass. Roundup is fastest. A black plastic cover (or thick mulch) works as well but is considerably slower.
2)Till the area.
3)Prepare the soil with whatever amendments are needed, depending on the chosen groundcover. This can be part of the tilling process.
4)Plant the groundcover.
5)Mulch the areas between plantings.
6)Water as appropriate.
That’s the fastest way. A more passive approach will take much longer, and result, as noted above, in opportunistic plants that you may not want establishing themselves.
A local nursery or your extension agent will know exactly what you need to do.
I’d suggest something akin to the “cover it with black plastic” approach, but without the plastic.
Cut the grass short first. Then cover the area with thick layers of wet newspaper or corrugated. Overlap a lot. Then cover that with soil, compost, wood chips, manure, or whatever you can get your hands on that will decompose nicely.
If all goes according to plan, the grass will be smothered underneath the layer of newspaper or corrugated. Depending on what you’ve put on top, you may have to wait a while, or you may be able to re-seed right away. Sprinkle the area with seed for some native wildflowers and groundcovers. Meanwhile, the newspaper or corrugated will eventually rot away.
The downside of this method is that it takes a fair amount of work, and a pretty big volume of materials. Though with 11 acres, you can probably get what you need to cover the newspaper or corrugated right on your own property. The upsides are that it is an “organic” method, and that if you make sure to include rich materials like manure, you’ll be improving the overall fertility of the area. This will encourage plants to grow or colonize there.
Good luck!
Shoshana, what did you use? I am thinking of ripping up the grass in my front yard and making something that requires less maintenance such as a garden with mulch and I also want to kill off my grass which won’t die.
You could always try fire, if outdoor burning is allowed where you are. I’ve done it. Rake some dry leaves into a small pile and light it. You’ll have bare earth underneath.
Sounds like the best of both worlds (woods and meadow; convenient shopping). About 20 years ago I tried a wildflower-meadow-in-a-can and got some decent results. I was planting the seeds in bare earth and not over grass, but perhaps with some agressive mowing of the grass prior to planting you can get a good result.
Hmmm…
So if we take the path of least resistance - that is, do nothing more than pull up the occasional treelette and other major non-desirables (icky prickly thistle is one I always remove), what can we expect?
A related question from Mr. Athena, surveying the masses of dying dandelions. “If we don’t mow those, are we just going to have 2 feet of decaying biomass here that will choke out any new growth?”
To clarify, the reason we’re not mowing right now is primarily because we are getting some of those wonderful wildflowers that we want in the midst of all the grass. We’re loath to kill off all the grass because at some level our efforts appear to be working; every year we have more daisies/black eyed susans/lupines/etc. We probably should have asked these questions two years ago before we started trying to kill off the lawn. Now we have sort of a two headed beast, half grass, half wild meadow.
I’ve seen dandelions choke everything else from a lawn. I understand that you don’t want to use chemicals, but those dandelions will probably keep anything else from growing in that area.
Salt the Earth! 
I’m told it takes about 150 pounds per acre and nothing will grow there for five years or so.
Oh, you want it faster, don’t you. 
Gasoline also tends to kill everything, and dissipates a mite faster than salt, but that might tend to be a bit flammable. Barbequeing might be a bit hazardous and I wouldn’t recommend stepping outside for a smoke.
:eek:
Seriously, you might try the various ‘smother/mulch’ options discussed, or simply cut and roll up the sod and plant something else in it’s place.
Some plants that are growing like mad in my yard:
- sedum of all kinds
- thymes of all kinds (woolly thyme makes the best weed and grass stopper - it’s so dense, not much grows up through it)
- calendula
- violas
- columbine
- creeping jenny
- soapwort
We’re having ground-cover fights in my front yard - I love it!
You can also try goutweed, ribbon grass, snow-in-summer, and mosses (mosses especially if you have moist, shady areas). You can keep digging out the grass, and replacing it with hardy perennials for an ongoing effort. My method of getting grass out of my yard has been digging it with a spade; you might not want to do that for eleven acres. 
Nuke it from orbit - it’s the only way to be sure 8)
I was going to mention fire also, but trees might not like that (though IIRC jack pines need fire) and probably not the greatest near a house.
Also was going to mention salt.
You have to do whatever I do (mostly nothing) - plenty of violets, clover and in shady parts - moss.
Brian
Leave it be. Don’t do anything.
If you want your artificial lawn to return to it’s natural state you will leave it alone while it does so. Enjoy the ride.
Keep notes, keep a journal. “Whoa, this weird flower popped up. We took a sample to the university and they say it’s something that NEVER blooms on a lawn”. Watch what it takes for real life to overtake human interference.
Oh, and buy a lot of Deep Woods Off.
While I do love nature the mosquitoes kick my ass. Be prepared.
You need some terriers or other diggy dogs - they will crater your lawn nicely. Then you can just mix some wildflower seeds into the earth when you refill the holes, and Bob should be your uncle.
As I’m most familiar with my end of the Mississippi, I don’t have experience with your shorter growing season. Perhaps you could look online for a botany professor at Michigan State or someone in the horticulture department there and send them an email query. You could also try the forestry and/or horticulture extension service.
In the South, we expect a recently abandoned agricultural site (nearest to your lawn condition for comparison purposes) with no planting or direct seeding of tree species to take about 4 to 5 years to get a grassy/herbaceous ground cover fully established and another 4 to 5 years to get a crop of pine seedlings established. Expect a longer time frame in your climate.
Those are some big dandelions! One person’s decaying biomass is another plant’s organic soil fertilizer, and while the decaying biomass will be in the way briefly, it will improve the quality of your soil for other plants.
For those who don’t understand what you’re up to, you could make a sign for the yard that says “Natural Succession in Progress” or some variant that will make a nice conversation starter for friends, family, and guests.
Again, it sounds fun. Good luck.