Most efficient way to deal with unused garden area

hole in my lovelywall

I have the guts of 1/2 acre ‘garden’ that’s like a field. It’s full of weeds, grass and is very uneven. It can’t currently be mowed. It could also do with some sort of drainage system. It’s not used.

Has anyone any suggestion on how best to handle it, with a very limited budget? Any novel idea to keep it under control?

I’d love to borrow livestock to just eat it but it’s not safely enclosed unfortunately.

looksee

Would you get a tractor and plough into it? Get it ploughed and harrowed so it is level then sow it with something you can mow. Whatever is in it at the moment will come up again anyway, you could maybe throw a bit of grass/clover to help it out. Then you either keep it mowed regularly with a ride on mower, or get someone to come in and cut it like a meadow a couple of times a year. Or you could plant trees.

hole in my lovelywall

Thanks. There are some trees, but they’re very young.

Would it be fit to mow after being ploughed?

looksee

Not after just ploughing, it would need to be harrowed.

10-10-20

Do you need it to be aesthetically nice to look at, or is it unseen?

If there is no real need to keep up the appearance, then could you strim it occasionally to keep the briars off and also plant it up some rough beds with plants which give good coverage? If as time moves on you decide to add a crushed stone path, then you can intertwine it between the beds. Just an idea as it keeps the maintenance low.

magicbastarder

you could let it go wild, unless you have a use for it? sounds like it's already started that journey.

macraignil

I'd agree with Looksee's suggestion to plant trees. A woodland of native trees would look after itself once established and be great for wildlife. You can get bare root young trees as whips for a couple of euros each and once you keep the competing vegetation away from them for the first year or two they should be able to outgrow the weeds on their own as they get older. You might need some protection from hares or rabbits as well if they are in big numbers in your area when the tree are first planted, but that is the approach I'd take with having that sort of area to be low maintenance.

There is also the option to get firewood from the trees in future with short rotation coppice allowing regular harvest of timber with new trunks regenerating from the stumps left from harvest and being more productive than simply planting new trees repeatedly which would take much longer to get a harvest. Willow and alder could grow well in the damper parts of the area.

Happy gardening!

looksee

once you keep the competing vegetation away from them for the first year or two they should be able to outgrow the weeds on their own 

I think this is an interesting point. I know I have somewhere seen an article about tree planting (in Ireland) - one of the major agencies - which said that when planting the very small whips you should just put them in and leave them to get on with it. Weeds would not do any harm and would protect them from rabbits and deer to some extent. I know other sites say to clear round the individual trees, so its hard to know.

I have a garden that I have planted a good few trees in and because I have been so busy the trees have been mowed round but most of the time they have an un-mowed collar of grass etc. The trees are doing really well. They were 2' whips and were put in 2 years or 1 year ago, and are growing well. Its garden rather than woodland and it is a mixture of mostly silver birch with things like bird cherry, hawthorn, crab apple, hazel, guelder rose, etc and of the maybe 40+ trees and shrubs planted only one died - it never got started and it was not a bit clear why it died. The rest are doing very well in soil that is about 4 to max 6 inches of very good soil over shale that is just yellow sand and stones. The 'grass' is mostly anything but grass, lots of creeping buttercup which is rampant, and very enthusiastic quantities of nettles and brambles that are mostly confined to patches on the boundaries of the site.

There are also rabbits, fat and happy bunnies that know they are safe to munch, but while they have dug up an entire patch of cyclamen, every single one of them, none of the trees has been even nibbled. Some trees have wire netting collars, others don't.

A previous owner of the sit planted lots of alder and willow, even though the site is the most free draining I have ever experienced. The alder are ok, though I have taken out a few, there were just too many and they were starving other trees, and the willows are in very poor condition, they rot from the roots and some have fallen, or we have just pushed over others with no need for tools.

macraignil

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119027143#Comment_119027143

A good few trees and shrubs planted in the garden here as well since I moved about 8years ago and a similar experience of good success with planting young whips of trees regardless of weed growth. I have noticed the ones where I controlled the competition a bit more have got bigger faster and it was more hares that did some damage to the young trees when first planted. I was able to stop the damage by putting sections of old drainage pipe over the young trunks but I was too late to save a particularly eaten young oak tree at the edge of the garden. We have since adopted a couple of dogs that were strays found up the country and there has been no sign of the hares since. The local foxes seem to keep the rabbit numbers under control here. I have read that willow and alder prefer damp ground but there are regularly some self seeding about the place here in all sorts of ground with one willow next to the driveway actually growing up out of rock.

Happy gardening!

hole in my lovelywall

Thanks for all the replies.

So much growth the last couple of weeks. I think I need some sort of livestock to keep it under control.