Gardening Advice
Basically my Garden is weed infested and has just very small patches of grass, my plan over the coming weeks was to spray the whole area with Roundup meaning that the weeds will die yet also ensuring that the grass dies too... Once this has been done I was then going to lay grass seed and re-grow the lawn from scratch.
As I say I'm quite new to gardening, don't really have the money for countless tools so was wondering if anyone can offer advice with the best way / the best order of getting everything done?
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What sort of weed? Smokable?8
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My wife is a keen gardener. Best advice she had was keep the bush well trimmed.2
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Took seven minutes... God people are getting old and slow on this Forum!!6
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Seriously don't use seed if your doing an entire lawn, turf is the way to go. See is a pain the the arse - and in my experience on any good for patches.
If you're really lazy and it's a small lawn anyway - what about AstroTurf - not a fan myself but one of my neighbours has it and it looks pretty good - and saves getting the flymo out.2 -
Fuck me I've turned in to a right boring bastard....ricky_otto said:Seriously don't use seed if your doing an entire lawn, turf is the way to go. See is a pain the the arse - and in my experience on any good for patches.
If you're really lazy and it's a small lawn anyway - what about AstroTurf - not a fan myself but one of my neighbours has it and it looks pretty good - and saves getting the flymo out.
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If you use round up you will have to leave the ground for at least 6-8 weeks. Then rake off all the dead stuff. Then get at least 100mm of good quality top soil. The really hard part is finding a really good quality seed. Ive just used a Tall Fescue variety which in this unpredictable environment has done really well. The other option is to hire a rotavator then filter out the crap, roll it and top soil it.1
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Yeah it is a small lawn... about 25 sqm
I originally thought of AstroTurf as see there are a lot of artificial ones on the market but changed my mind as want to put the effort out there and almost take up the hobby (I'm too boring at the moment as you mentioned the other day lol!)
Why is seed a pain in the arse?2 -
You will need to top dress the old lawn with decent topsoil before seeding. Sounds like the old lawn will be very compacted so you will have to rotorvate and aerate before laying the new topsoil. You can hire a rotorvater but failing that,at least aerate the old soil. Invest in a decent fork and soil rake. Good luck
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Have been looking around this morning and just been getting confused which is why I decided to come on here and ask... Don't really want to hire a rotavator... if I was to get at least 100mm of good top soil do I just rake it into the soil before seeding?TEL said:If you use round up you will have to leave the ground for at least 6-8 weeks. Then rake off all the dead stuff. Then get at least 100mm of good quality top soil. The really hard part is finding a really good quality seed. Ive just used a Tall Fescue variety which in this unpredictable environment has done really well. The other option is to hire a rotavator then filter out the crap, roll it and top soil it.
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Yup this is where my ignorance shows through... Do you mean by aerating the soil?Redvalleyeast said:You will need to top dress the old lawn with decent topsoil before seeding. Sounds like the old lawn will be very compacted so you will have to rotorvate and aerate before laying the new topsoil. You can hire a rotorvater but failing that,at least aerate the old soil. Invest in a decent fork and soil rake. Good luck
I thought you'd just put a few random letters together when you first wrote it1 -
I'll give you some gardening advice. If you're thinking about cutting back your trees during your week off, pay someone else to do it!
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Be fair - the old ones are the best!ForeverAddickted said:Took seven minutes... God people are getting old and slow on this Forum!!
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Try and get the top soil in flat as possible, walk it in and rake off the high spots. And repeat until its as good as you can get. then fluff up the top 3/4 -1 inch and lay your turf green side up or seed it as per TEL.
Instant garden make over.
The down side, its knackering. I prepped my garden over last autumn/ winter. I killed the grass and weeds cleared it and laid 7 tons of topsoil to level the garden out. 2 weeks ago I added 2 more tons of soil to take out the settlement and bit of fresh across the all of it and then took a day off work to lay the turf. It looks great now, well worth the effort.
Good time of the year to do this, you'll have a work out doing this job. You wont want to do this job when it warms up.
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Cheers for the advice Keston...
Do you have any topsoil that you can suggest I go and get or is the B&Q / Wickes stuff good enough for the job?
For a garden thats around 25 sqm how many bags would I ideally need?0 -
I used Stuarts on North Cray rd. B&Q / Wicks etc. are certainly ok but you will pay more for. Stuart's good stuff is £65/ 750kg, so a good saving there. Unless you want something resembling Lords this will be perfectly ok. As to how much you need is a bit of a how long is a piece of string question. It will depend on how much you need to replace and level with. If you Google topsoil a lot of the suppliers will have calculators on their website. Get some rough dimensions, (H x W x D), and input them. Remember the soil compacts somewhat so you will need a bit more that you might think.ForeverAddickted said:Cheers for the advice Keston...
Do you have any topsoil that you can suggest I go and get or is the B&Q / Wickes stuff good enough for the job?
For a garden thats around 25 sqm how many bags would I ideally need?1 -
I guess depth will come into the question because of how much I'll need to level the ground?0
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If you want countless tools for your garden, ask on a millwall forum.2
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Yes. Get a line strung (this a piece of string) across your garden, side to side, up and down and across the diagonals. Doing this will show you the highs and lows, where to add and where to remove.ForeverAddickted said:I guess depth will come into the question because of how much I'll need to level the ground?
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Excellent so what I'm looking at is...
(1) Put down the weed killer to destroy everything and then rake it all off.
(2) Put down the topsoil to level the surface (raking it in etc.)
(3) Add the grass seed and continue etc.0 -
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id certainly suggest testing the the depth at first -maybe a finger to test? If it's moist enough then you know you're good to full thrust with the cultivator. You've mentioned it's a fairly small area, so no real need to rush things. Let nature take its course. And make sure you're gloved up, you don't want any little weeds pushing their way out in 9 months.ForeverAddickted said:I guess depth will come into the question because of how much I'll need to level the ground?
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Grass is a real pain. Moss, speedwell, leatherjackets, ants - the list of lawn problems is almost endless. Then there's regular feeding and aeration. But while you do need some grass IMO, the best thing you can do is to expand the size of your flower beds first to minimise the amount of grass you are growing. Go for easy maintenance borders. For example, RHS Hyde Hall in Essex has a Dry Garden which displays examples of low maintenance/low water usage plants. Try some of these instead of grass in certain sunny areas?
But the most important tip is make sure you buy a mower that your wife can use, then you don't even have to go outside at all.5 -
Get Roland in. He's just about crap at everything else, but at least we got a half decent pitch.2
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Prepare the existing area get it as flat as possible and then put down your top soil. Seriously research the seed as most of the stuff you will buy over the counter at Garden centres is only good for patching. When you sow the seeds make sure the soil is damp but not wet. Then rake the seeds lightly.....over seed it, dont be shy. Then you have to water it but make sure you dont just wash the seeds away. Ive done much bigger areas than yours and you can get good results, but its not just as case of sprinkling and hope. Make sure you get really good top soil.....shop around and tell the suppliers what youre doing and what they recommend.ForeverAddickted said:
Have been looking around this morning and just been getting confused which is why I decided to come on here and ask... Don't really want to hire a rotavator... if I was to get at least 100mm of good top soil do I just rake it into the soil before seeding?TEL said:If you use round up you will have to leave the ground for at least 6-8 weeks. Then rake off all the dead stuff. Then get at least 100mm of good quality top soil. The really hard part is finding a really good quality seed. Ive just used a Tall Fescue variety which in this unpredictable environment has done really well. The other option is to hire a rotavator then filter out the crap, roll it and top soil it.
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Cheers for the advice... Do you have a particular brand of seed that you can recommend?TEL said:
Prepare the existing area get it as flat as possible and then put down your top soil. Seriously research the seed as most of the stuff you will buy over the counter at Garden centres is only good for patching. When you sow the seeds make sure the soil is damp but not wet. Then rake the seeds lightly.....over seed it, dont be shy. Then you have to water it but make sure you dont just wash the seeds away. Ive done much bigger areas than yours and you can get good results, but its not just as case of sprinkling and hope. Make sure you get really good top soil.....shop around and tell the suppliers what youre doing and what they recommend.ForeverAddickted said:
Have been looking around this morning and just been getting confused which is why I decided to come on here and ask... Don't really want to hire a rotavator... if I was to get at least 100mm of good top soil do I just rake it into the soil before seeding?TEL said:If you use round up you will have to leave the ground for at least 6-8 weeks. Then rake off all the dead stuff. Then get at least 100mm of good quality top soil. The really hard part is finding a really good quality seed. Ive just used a Tall Fescue variety which in this unpredictable environment has done really well. The other option is to hire a rotavator then filter out the crap, roll it and top soil it.
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Remove all the grass and cover with weed proof membrane, add 5 ton of 15mm and 5 ton of 10mm pea shingle, railway sleepers added for effect, retire to a comfy chair on raised decking covered in artificial grass and sample a cold beer. Totally maintenance free, the kennels and the dogs are optional extras
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Youre going to need 4 of those big bulk bags of soil for a 5m x 5m area0
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A couple of my neighbours have Astroturf and I think it looks bloody awful. Quite expensive too.
A friend has one that is bright green - apparently it was cheaper. My guess is because nobody on earth wants it and they wanted to get shot of it.1 -
Can't go wrong with this brand...ForeverAddickted said:
Cheers for the advice... Do you have a particular brand of seed that you can recommend?TEL said:
Prepare the existing area get it as flat as possible and then put down your top soil. Seriously research the seed as most of the stuff you will buy over the counter at Garden centres is only good for patching. When you sow the seeds make sure the soil is damp but not wet. Then rake the seeds lightly.....over seed it, dont be shy. Then you have to water it but make sure you dont just wash the seeds away. Ive done much bigger areas than yours and you can get good results, but its not just as case of sprinkling and hope. Make sure you get really good top soil.....shop around and tell the suppliers what youre doing and what they recommend.ForeverAddickted said:
Have been looking around this morning and just been getting confused which is why I decided to come on here and ask... Don't really want to hire a rotavator... if I was to get at least 100mm of good top soil do I just rake it into the soil before seeding?TEL said:If you use round up you will have to leave the ground for at least 6-8 weeks. Then rake off all the dead stuff. Then get at least 100mm of good quality top soil. The really hard part is finding a really good quality seed. Ive just used a Tall Fescue variety which in this unpredictable environment has done really well. The other option is to hire a rotavator then filter out the crap, roll it and top soil it.
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Ours was more for practical reasons, our decking is some 10' above ground level and the dogs breaking a leg slipping on wet decking was more of a concern than what it looks like.Swisdom said:A couple of my neighbours have Astroturf and I think it looks bloody awful. Quite expensive too.
A friend has one that is bright green - apparently it was cheaper. My guess is because nobody on earth wants it and they wanted to get shot of it.0
