killed weeds, now how do i tidy the ground before seeding?

Morpheus

Hi all,

Im having an absolute nightmare with my garden...

moved in 3 years ago now. only started trying to fix it this year.

its a failry standard sized back garden in an estate.

Ive dug it over twice with a mini digger and rotovated it and due to flooding had to put in drainage.

I let weeds grow for 12 weeks and 2 weeks ago i put down roundup to kill everything.

now 90% of the weeds are dead so i will spot kill the remainder.

the result though is that the ground is full of dead plant material and long brown stalks sticking up everywhere.

How do i clear the soil and prepare it for seeding for a lawn?

do i strimmer the stalks of all the long weeds and manually turn over the soil with a fork?

I need to level the ground a bit so any advice on what the next step involved after killing all the weeds off, is appreciated. Im worried i may need topsoil before seeding too as its quite stony although the stones are pretty small.

tampopo

would a good hard raking over not take the dead brown plant material away?

after that, it'd be reasonably easy and simple to sow grass seed.

seeing as you've put drainage in it, I would rake over a couple of inches, sow the seed and rake it in lightly. Leave it and watch it grow.

don't go rotovating the 10% remaining weeds or they'll mulitiply back up to 100%

best of luck with it.

Morpheus

oh my god....

this is awful... here i am 18 months down the road and no better off....

my garden is full of weeds yet again. i rented the place out and the tennants never used the back. I had started a garden path but never got around to completing it.

this is what it currently looks like...

that green, is patchy grass, shamrock and weeds.

that pipe is all that remains of the drainage that I installed along with a french drain.

the railway sleeper is to be used to install a step up to the back gate.

the whole place slants down from left to right and there is a small slope from the back wall towards the foreground.

I now have an epic weeding session ahead of me, i want to kill EVERYTHING in it and start over. its also got TONS of stones in it. no matter how much I rake the bloody thing there always seems to be stones near the surface.

Any advice is appreciated. currently have a large container of roundup which I was going to use but havent started yet until I hear others opinions.

Yi Harr

What you could do is get a tonne or two of decent top soil in. It looks as though the builders left you with stones and subsoil in the back.

I you get the soil in, level off the garden, you'll cover most of the stones and weeds and have a decent surface for seeding.

You could also put beds along the sides and back in order to minimise the amount of grassed area.

You could plant the beds up with grasses or something very low maintenance.

Corsendonk

Thats not bad for weeds!! But the stones look a real problem. I would double dig the whole garden, basically start one side dig a trench two spades deep, wheel barrow that to the farside and then dig a trench in front of your first trench throwing the soil from the second trench into the 1st. As you do that you can take out the large stones and any weed tap roots or large weeds. You will need a certain amount of small stones in the ground for drainage. Some gardeners recommend putting a layer of compost in the trench but I think you just need to concentrate on cleaning the rubbish from your soil this time round. The double digging will do this whilst you bury the existing weeds too deep to grow back, aerating your soil and leveling it at the same time. I should warn you do that this method is also know as Bsatard digging.

Morpheus

thanks for both replies. how would I best level off the garden though as it slopes down to the path where the photo is taken from? do i need to push it back from the path and make some sort of wall to support it like?

Yi Harr

Morphéus wrote: »

thanks for both replies. how would I best level off the garden though as it slopes down to the path where the photo is taken from? do i need to push it back from the path and make some sort of wall to support it like?

You could build a wall by the path alright. Then you'd need to rake the soil on the higher side down towards the house. You could use bricks or sleepers to build the wall by the path. A couple of brick courses would probably be a longer term solution than sleepers though.

If you don't want to get additional soil in you'll need to bastard trench (as the other poster said) or just dig holes around the garden and put the stones which are on the surface into them.

redser7

Consider large/wide raised beds running round the garden with a much smaller circular or irregular shaped lawn area in the middle. Add in some hard landscaping (paths and patio area). Will look great and save you a hell of alot of time and heart ache sorting the whole thing for lawn. Maybe that is beyond what you can do, but an option?

bigpaddy2004

What about buying yourself some of that instant lawn you just lay down yourself? Quick and easy and an instant lawn.
I am doing this this year myself as I am in the same boat as you, no matter what I do I just can not get the garden right!