It was on the edge of this that I tried to put in a garden. All I could do at the time was till the area several times over with an ancient monster of a tiller that could barely cut its way through all the root systems. The soil was hard and difficult to hoe. What I really wanted to do was make a lasagna garden, but I didn’t have enough organic material to do the whole area.

In the section I planted the corn, I did make some attempt. In between the hilled rows, I lay down layers of wet newspaper, then topped it with grass clippings. I didn’t have enough of either do to the whole garden, or I would have. It helped keep the ground moist and ended any need for weeding in between my corn. My corn and rhubarb were pretty much the only things that grew well.

In the fall, after everything was pulled up and I was getting things ready for the winter, I tilled the whole area again. Most of the garden was just as hard to work as before, but suddenly my tiller just sank into the ground by several soft, beautiful inches. Then it would hit a hard spot again! Where the corn rows had been was still hard, but where the grass clippings and newspaper had been in between the rows was soft, gorgeous soil. The difference was night and day!

Unfortunately, I can’t say how that helped out in the long run, as that was the last garden I ever planted. The next summer never arrived (it was all cold, rain and flooding) and then we started moving again, so the area was left to grow over. Even when we came back again a couple of years later, I never got the chance to start up another garden.

Which is a long way of saying that, from my experience, using grass clippings as cover in bewteen my corn rows worked really well.