[st0n3]

Heat up the soil to kill all the plant life + kill all the important soil microbes...

I once tried covering a patch of bermuda with a clear plastic... in the middle of the hot Georgia summer... Didn't help.

I'm not sure that a tarp would get hot enough in the winter...

A lady that I garden for tried covering a monster "weed" pile / compost pile with a huge sheet of black plastic for a couple years... I took the plastic home and used it to cover a tent for a couple of weeks.

In the Spring I had tons of seedlings come up as a result of the compost that dropped off that plastic... None of that stuff had grown in that spot previously...

Yeah... personal experience vs theory...

I did once cover a patch of florida betony with a black sheet of plastic... covered that with some old carpet (upside down) covered that with some mulch...

A number of years later... took that mess up... Florida betony was gone...

The tarp idea can work for some things... but it surely hasn't proved to be the solution everybody claims.

 

[Danaus29]

In my experience, tarps work to kill grass. They don't work on shrubs, brambles, ground ivy, vines or thistles. I did say grass in my post.

One big drawback to using a tarp, which no one ever mentions, is the critters that hide underneath. We don't have venomous snakes here so snakes under a tarp is not a concern. I have moved a lot of flat material off the ground and found snakes underneath. You'll also find vole and shrew tunnels, worms, slugs, snails, centipedes and hundreds of other little creepy crawlies including big spiders. I avoid using non compostable material to kill grass because of the critters it attracts. The same critters will hide underneath cardboard, until it breaks down. Since you don't remove it, you don't have to worry about what's underneath. UNLESS you have to worry about venomous snakes, maybe scorpions. We don't have big scorpions ether, just little bitty harmless to people scorpions.

I have never gardened in sandy soil. My experience is with clay and loam and all the variables in between. Clay is hard to break up with a tiller. Even a heavy duty tiller will not kill lawn grass enough for you to be able to plant lettuce in a new garden. Here you always have to kill the grass in a new garden or it will come back from the roots.

 

[st0n3]

Clay is hard to break up with a tiller.

Yup...
I always tell people that a tiller is useless until you get the soil broken up... Dig the soil... don't need a tiller.
Tiller on compacted soil just bounces up and down... It will beat you to death...

 

[Danaus29]

Yup...
I always tell people that a tiller is useless until you get the soil broken up... Dig the soil... don't need a tiller.
Tiller on compacted soil just bounces up and down... It will beat you to death...

I bought a heavy duty, rear tine tiller just to use on my hard clay soil. We used it to make a garden out of lawn in November, several years ago. Despite being tilled and having organic material worked into it for about 15 years there are still spots where it beats us up pretty bad. And I still had to use a shovel to dig trenches so I could plant garlic.