New Lawn issues

Patrick_K

Good morning all,

I have a new lawn that I'm trying to 'cultivate' which I may have just made worse and now I need some advice on how to solve the problem !

The seed was sown in late July so got a scorched a bit and was very slow to appear, however it did eventually start to come on and there is (was) now a decent covering a grass.

HOWEVER while the grass was struggling the weeds were absolutely thriving. I believe these to be Docks, Grounsel and a lot of Shepherds Purse - some of which were up to 3-4 feet high. I got a rush of blood to the head on Saturday and we ended up pulling up the whole lot.

This was probably the completely wrong thing to do, as the large weeds took quite a bit of soil with them and what I now have is a garden with quite a lot of grass which is about 5-6 inches long but also quite a lot of holes about 2 inches deep where the weeds used to be ! Yes I am an idiot and I'm sure I should killed/strimmed them instead of pulling them but as I said I am an idiot and I had a rush of blood, bad combination !

So now to fix the problem I have created .....
The options as I see them are:

1. Armegeddon. I use round-up to kill all life in the garden, get in a bit of top soil, roll/rake it level and start again. Question with this is how long would it take to kill everything and have the soil ready to seed again ? Would it be too late for this year ?

2. Fill the holes with topsoil, rake it level and plant some more seed. Is it ok to do this, planting new grass in the middle of the 'old' ? should I mow the existing grass back down before I sow so I can then leave it all for a couple of weeks.

3. Actually thats it, a short list ! Or has anyone got any other suggestions. Failing this and as gardening doesnt appear to be my 'thing' how much does gravel cost ? ;-)

Cheers
Patrick_K

ircoha

pulling the weeds will not have got all the roots so once they show again u need to use a selective weed killer

GreeBo

well you can do either really
1) will take about 18 days before you can sow seed

but it sounds like you dont need to go that far.

Fill in the holes with topsoil/compost (not peat!)
the cut the existing grass (FYI you shouldnt let your grass get that long, you never want to cut more than 1/3 of its length in one go)

the reseed the bald patches.

2 weeks you will be grand.
Continue to cut the existing grass but avoid the new areas as the mower will jsut hoover up the new grass.

Make sure to keep it watered (though it shouldnt be a problem this time of year)

AdrianR

I'd go with option 2.

On another note, bit late with this in your case though, "weeds" can be divided into 2 types, grassland and tillage weeds, most weeds that grow with a new lawn are tillage weeds, usually the best way to deal with tillage weeds in a new lawn is simply to ignore them and cut the lawn as normal, once the grass gets established the tillage weeds will stop growing. If you still have some docs and thistles after the lawn is established you can pull or dig these out and reseed the bare patches.

Patrick_K

Thats great, thanks for the help lads.