Why all the plastic?

You may notice that I have a WHOLE lot of plastic laying on the ground. The reason is super easy: It makes gardening far less laborious than it would be otherwise. Grass, weeds and anything else you would have to remove to plant a bed require light to live, but if you cover them, they DIE, and their rotting green matter gets soft and easily turned under, which not only makes breaking soil easy but it also makes the soil so broke more fertile, on account of increased organic matter.  Basically you can either cut up and remove the grass and all its roots, and in the process lose an awful lot of good useful material like nigtrogen fixation bacteria and humic acid, or you can compost the grass and its roots in situ and allow worms, heat, and time to do the hard work for you. Basically you start with an area; cover it with plastic; from time to time drain water off of top of plastic; and then later say 6 months come back take up plastic and till in all the dead grass, weeds and other plants under the plastic. If need be use boards and the like to hold plastic in place.

And that is all there is to that. It controls weeds and makes planting easier. The down side is slugs will hide under it, but if you are more clever than them you can use this to your advantage.