My dad taught me to use potatoes to convert grass areas into garden beds.
We would lay the seed potatoes out on top of the grass, then take spadefuls of sod/earth from the sides just to cover them. Part way through the season we would trench again from the sides, usually with some small fish laid out first for fertilizer, and cover that up. Whatever weeds or grass appeared in the trench area they were just turned over for trenching and added to the green manure effect, which also suppressed anything coming up in the potato bed..
The potatoes by end of season were dense enough to completely suppress any weeds around them and no grass made it up from beneath them. All the green manure from the grass had been incorporated over the season. So after digging the crop, you were left with a lovely bed to work with the next year.
That is in clay soil here, as well.
I have an area I tarped over last fall, and hoping to get that back into garden space this spring.
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