New house, garden help

extremehalo

Hey folks,

Just in the final states of purchasing a new house, which is stressfull enough so Im hoping this wont be!
hopefully have the keys by the end of the month and would like to have a resonable looking back garden asap in the summer months.

Currently it is a mass of weeds and the usual back garden/grass of a new house build.

What I was thinking of doing (hopefully ye guru's will have some insight or comments! )

1, Strim the weeds etc down and rake off
2, Spray the area with weedkiller / leave for week or so???
3, Rotovate area, followed by raking (pulling out clumps/stones/dead weeds etc
4, Flatten down/roll
5, Lay seeds down
6, Water/keep off

Would appreciate any tips or guidelines!

wildlandscape

sounds like you have a good plan!

I can only suggest you focus on lawn this year and allow yourself time to see the strengths and weaknesses of your new garden for this year. For instance will it flood in winter, is it in shade at certain points of the day, is it exposed to drying winds etc....and also get a soil test and know what type of soil you have and what nutrients are needed. This could save you so much money over time as it will guide you on what plants to buy and what fertiliser to use. Good luck!

blackharvester

dont need strimm weeds before spraying, because you have to spray weed kiler on the weed leafs. weed kiler (for example roundap) is going by leafs to the roots and he need at least 2-3 weeks to kill the weeds. depend from the weather. when you will see weeds are dead the you can rotovate all garden and pick up the stones and rubbish. then you can buy few bags of top soil and mix with your soil. then need to make the level and you can lay seeds down. and dont let anybody to walk on the new grass, remember about the watering.

johno2

^^^ What he said.
Try to wait until you think there'll be at least 2 dry days before you apply the weedkiller. Make sure it's systemic weedkiller too, that stuff mimics sugar in the plant and it tries to store it in the root. Wait 3 weeks for it to do it's job properly and take it from there.

johno

fungijay

the hardest part of getting a good lawn, is raking it after you have rotavated it, depending on how much rock and rubble is in your ground, it can take hours to get it right and by my experience you will feel like throwing in the towel loads of times thinking its good enough. perseverance is the key.


try and pick a nice saturday to do it and limit yourself to 2 beers for thirst!! haha yes!! its thirsty work!

best of luck.

HardyEustace

I mentioned this in another thread but read that you should pick out as many weed roots as possible before rotivating.

Otherwise they get chopped up and spread nicely throughout the whole garden. Divide and conquer, if you will, but not in your favour!

extremehalo

Thanks for all the quick replies!

When I get a few bags of top soil would I want to use the rotavator again to mix it or will some shovel work do?

magicbastarder

extremehalo wrote: »

3, Rotovate area, followed by raking (pulling out clumps/stones

from the couple of new build gardens i've helped with, this probably ended up being most of the work, with soil being full of crap the builders used as backfill. first thing i'd do is dig a hole at least a foot on each side and a foot deep in a few spots to see what condition the soil is in.

blackharvester

you can mix top soil with your soil by steel rake

extremehalo

oh and final question!, how much topsoil would you put down? half inch then mix prehaps?

blackharvester

i didnt see you soil, but half inch should be enough,