Selfsufficientish.com

Hello. This summer I'd like to make a part of the lawn into a flower bed. What is the best and/or quickest way to get rid of the grass without killer substances?

The best way is to remove the turf.
It's quite easy, just mark out squares with your spade and peel the turf off using the spade horizontal about an inch below the surface.
It's a lot easier to do than explain.
Then pile the turves grass side down and cover in a shady corner of your garden somewhere until next year, when they will have rotted down and will be all crumbly and fibrous and you can use it wherever you need some added soil.
In the meantime, dig the new bed with added compost, maybe add some bone meal, and that's it.

Nah! If you're under 50, relatively fit,and have a real feel for the soil(Tony has ,but he's as old as me!) Double dig it.t aint easy,.....it's also known as Bastard Trenching..!

What would happen with the grassy layer - cut up with the spade and covered with the soil or lain as a carpet at the bottom and then covered with the soil?

If you don't cut it up too much and lay it grassy side down, that should work well.

Many a time I've made a new border by stripping the grass and laying it face down a spade depth deep. Thing is that the border will sink as the grass rots down and you will eventually have to top it up with compost of some description to make it up to the height it was at the beginning.

By the time you have stripped the turf, laid it to one side, dug another layer out, put the turf back and covered it you will have done the bastard trenching mentioned above in effect (and probably learned exactly why it's called that she says laughing). But it's easier to do a job properly first time than to do it wrong first, then to redo it properly.

You got it Flo,every second word you express for the next three days is....!!