Removing Lawn for Patio

CarrickD

Hi All,

Before building Brick Patio, I've killed off the lawn with Roundup, when excavating the area, should I remove the top layer of Lawn and barrow it into a skip or could I use this soil/dead grass in a different area of the garden, say for building up an embankment?

Skips seem very expensive for the amount of grass/top soil I'll be removing

10-10-20

You've posioned the soil and this will take anything from 8 months to 2 years to recover. In my opinion, you should just have removed and relocated the grass and soil, and then treated the remaining soil with roundup.
I'd recommend moving the soil to form the basis of the embankment, but covering it with a good layer of fresh/untreated soil, and not planting it for a number of months.

magicbastarder

does roundup take that long to break down if sprayed directly onto soil?

Just The One

CarrickD wrote:

Hi All,

Before building Brick Patio, I've killed off the lawn with Roundup, when excavating the area, should I remove the top layer of Lawn and barrow it into a skip or could I use this soil/dead grass in a different area of the garden, say for building up an embankment?

Skips seem very expensive for the amount of grass/top soil I'll be removing

Where are you living - I might be willing to take topsoil off your hands

10-10-20

magicbastarder wrote:

does roundup take that long to break down if sprayed directly onto soil?

Hmmmm...

Researching this I found the following comment "The largest single user of Roundup reportedly is the U.S. Government, which sprays huge quantities of the herbicide over the northern countries of South America in an effort to discourage cultivation of the coca plant."

"Low glyphosate concentrations can be found in many creeks and rivers in U.S. and Europe. In the US glyphosate has been called "extremely persistent" by its EPA, yet half lives vary from as little as 3 days at a soil site in Texas, 141 days at a site in Iowa, to between 1 - 3 years in Swedish forest soils being observed."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup#Effects_on_soil_and_on_natural_wild_flora_.26_fauna

CarrickD

I thought that Roundup would breakdown a lot quicker than that but just as well I'm putting the Patio down so...

I'm in Carrick on Shannon. It's not a great lot of soil anyway, Garden is 7 x 8 metres.

Just The One

CarrickD wrote:

I thought that Roundup would breakdown a lot quicker than that but just as well I'm putting the Patio down so...

I'm in Carrick on Shannon. It's not a great lot of soil anyway, Garden is 7 x 8 metres.

A week after spreading round-up the ground should be fine. Cattle can be put back on it after a week as far as a I am aware.

TheDriver

Felt sick as a dog after using roundup last month!