Renovating a house isn't for the faint hearted @TattyMac as you are finding out. We found this out the first time around, when we renovated our barn into a lovely little home. We didn't have a contingency fund and the build nearly wiped us out. For the second and more expensive renovation we had a builders quote and mentally added on another £50,000 and had very little change from that! However I would recommend doing it, if you can afford the outlay. Most times you get what you want, learn a heck of a lot and can take pride in achieving something from what could possibly have been an inhabitable house. Good luck with the garden, and you will be surprised how quickly you will forget the hassle of the build - I have.
I didn't read the entire thread but if the area is at all passable just set a lawnmower to high and run over the lot. do that every week and it'll even end up looking a bit like a lawn! It's what I do between my strawberry rows where we have a mixture of fat hen, yarrow, shepherds purse, thistles etc.
Renovating a house isn't for the faint hearted @TattyMac as you are finding out. We found this out the first time around, when we renovated our barn into a lovely little home. We didn't have a contingency fund and the build nearly wiped us out. For the second and more expensive renovation we had a builders quote and mentally added on another £50,000 and had very little change from that! However I would recommend doing it, if you can afford the outlay. Most times you get what you want, learn a heck of a lot and can take pride in achieving something from what could possibly have been an inhabitable house. Good luck with the garden, and you will be surprised how quickly you will forget the hassle of the build - I have.
Too right GD2. We had a continguency fund of £20,000 above builders quote, but should have been £50,000.
It's a great house now with a room to make music. But now that I have that room I can't afford the musical instruments. In fact gardening has taken over music. Is that a good thing?
Still, can't wait to get in (when we mug the carpet fitter to get our money back).
Kent near the white cliffs. Always learning and often the hard way.
I didn't read the entire thread but if the area is at all passable just set a lawnmower to high and run over the lot. do that every week and it'll even end up looking a bit like a lawn! It's what I do between my strawberry rows where we have a mixture of fat hen, yarrow, shepherds purse, thistles etc.
Must admit that sounds the easiest thing to do Skandi. I guess you are assuming grass will never be sown in these areas then. I've got them killed off for now though. The soil is so chalky perhaps I should just sow wild flowers now, I'm sure they would take. Wild flowers around the patio would be unusual, but different.
Kent near the white cliffs. Always learning and often the hard way.
Gardening is great therapy, it will help you to forget all your building woes @TattyMac it has certainly been great therapy for me when I needed to forget my troubles. Putting the area to wild flowers and "weeds" would be a brilliant idea, far less upkeep than sowing lawn seed. It's your call.
I wouldn't use a rotovator on anything unless it was do dig in a huge amount (in the region of 30cm) of organic material for 'dead' upper soil horizons, even that would only be the once. Rotovating on builder's soil carries a risk of damage to the machine and personal injury as any topsoil is usually thin and uneven cover up for rubble and site waste that has been dumped. Rotovating on any soil ccan permanently damage the soil structure, soil texture, disrupt the soil ecology and close air channels and kill off organisms (worms and plant roots) that build the air channels. In severe cases it can cause a deadpan as clays and silts aggregate to a level where the bottom of the blade reaches below the soil and inhibit drainage. t's like having a buried butyl pond liner
That was also the advise from the soil scientists I spoke to.
It'd be easier forking that lot out and any incidental bricks you encounter. It's not too dense and wouldn't take long once you get into the rhythm. It looks more daunting than it is.
That's a job I'd do in the autumn when weed seeds won't have nice warm conditions to germinate and grow faster than I can deal with it. It's also cooler to work.
My neighbour rotovated every year for many years until he moved into a care home and his soil is useless. I've spent the last two tears trying to remediate it with green manures and any organics I can add in the hop that when the place does sell the garden will be workable and the new owner will be more inclined to garden on it rather than slab it over as so many other householders in the area have done. It's a losing battle as though there's nutrition in the soil there's no air permeation and the drainage is poor, which in itself benefits weed species and moss.
The radishes, mustard, phacelia, sunflowers are barely above my ankles.
I wouldn't use a rotovator on anything unless it was do dig in a huge amount (in the region of 30cm) of organic material for 'dead' upper soil horizons, even that would only be the once. Rotovating on builder's soil carries a risk of damage to the machine and personal injury as any topsoil is usually thin and uneven cover up for rubble and site waste that has been dumped. Rotovating on any soil ccan permanently damage the soil structure, soil texture, disrupt the soil ecology and close air channels and kill off organisms (worms and plant roots) that build the air channels. In severe cases it can cause a deadpan as clays and silts aggregate to a level where the bottom of the blade reaches below the soil and inhibit drainage. t's like having a buried butyl pond liner
That was also the advise from the soil scientists I spoke to.
It'd be easier forking that lot out and any incidental bricks you encounter. It's not too dense and wouldn't take long once you get into the rhythm. It looks more daunting than it is.
That's a job I'd do in the autumn when weed seeds won't have nice warm conditions to germinate and grow faster than I can deal with it. It's also cooler to work.
My neighbour rotovated every year for many years until he moved into a care home and his soil is useless. I've spent the last two tears trying to remediate it with green manures and any organics I can add in the hop that when the place does sell the garden will be workable and the new owner will be more inclined to garden on it rather than slab it over as so many other householders in the area have done. It's a losing battle as though there's nutrition in the soil there's no air permeation and the drainage is poor, which in itself benefits weed species and moss.
The radishes, mustard, phacelia, sunflowers are barely above my ankles.
Maybe you've already started?
Hi Reluctant, I'm waiting for the weedkiller to do its stuff. Yes there are blocks and bricks ready to come out first. If I leave it until autumn though the weeds will be back! About a tennis court's worth or more. I'll be covering the front and working on the back soon I hope. It was a small holding growing spuds but that stopped maybe early '80s so I would expect some fertility.
But it's chalk in the Dover area with 8 inches of grey soil ontop. Where there is grass it is thin. They say wild flowers like the soil not to be very fertile, and if I grow them instead of grass I will be adding chalk and not top soil.
But will it be nice having wild flowers around the patio area? I'm not so sure. Wild flowers come and go leaving the twiggy stalks. Not a great sight right outside your wiindows when the heads are gone. The stalks only look good on the horizon against the sky.
I guess it will be grass and the wild flower experiments done away from the house. Topsoil will be needed with pre seed fertilizer I expect. With the rubble out I think it will be best to rotovate all this in but maybe not deep. Say 4 inches plus depth of added soild. Otherwise I'll bring up the chalk making it very alkaline.
Kent near the white cliffs. Always learning and often the hard way.
Gardening is great therapy, it will help you to forget
Hahaha. It isn't always. It's a chore and an extension of unpleasant house work for many.
I would prefer to make a living out of music and have gardening as a hobby, but not many make money out of music and so I must do another job. Gardening uses up time normally spent rehearsing and improving my playing. I'll have to keep on top of it. But I do like reading and watching GW. I will make it low maintenance until retirement. Then I can garden AND play!
Right now I'm moving in and the garden is a nightmare because it is huge, has never really been a garden, has been overgrown for a decade or two. My first garden at that. It really is daunting and dare I say a little scarey.
Kent near the white cliffs. Always learning and often the hard way.
Our local council started two or three years ago to throw wildflower seeds along the grass verges of the main roads and verges between roads.When they flower they look beautiful When they die off, out comes their sit on lawn mowers and away they go. The next year, more flowers come up on their own and it really has cheered up the outskirts of town and made them look very welcoming.
Yes it's been great this year in East Kent as well. But if you toss seeds onto grass they just die don't they? Is there some preparation? When we were sent a free bag of wild seeds I tossed them onto the grass and nothing happened at all. I did prep some ox eye daisy seeds and they have grown right through the meadow where I currently live just three years later (not my house).
It's a nice idea but I'm not sure I would like to see brown cut down stalks instead of grass immediately outside the windows and patio area in Autumn. Maybe I'm too clinical about things immediately around me. Each to their own. I would like to see wild flowers growing in the perimeter of the garden and a fan out from one rear garden corner towards the house.
Kent near the white cliffs. Always learning and often the hard way.
Posts
Too right GD2. We had a continguency fund of £20,000 above builders quote, but should have been £50,000.
It's a great house now with a room to make music. But now that I have that room I can't afford the musical instruments. In fact gardening has taken over music. Is that a good thing?
Still, can't wait to get in (when we mug the carpet fitter to get our money back).
Rotovating on builder's soil carries a risk of damage to the machine and personal injury as any topsoil is usually thin and uneven cover up for rubble and site waste that has been dumped.
Rotovating on any soil ccan permanently damage the soil structure, soil texture, disrupt the soil ecology and close air channels and kill off organisms (worms and plant roots) that build the air channels. In severe cases it can cause a deadpan as clays and silts aggregate to a level where the bottom of the blade reaches below the soil and inhibit drainage. t's like having a buried butyl pond liner
That was also the advise from the soil scientists I spoke to.
It'd be easier forking that lot out and any incidental bricks you encounter. It's not too dense and wouldn't take long once you get into the rhythm. It looks more daunting than it is.
That's a job I'd do in the autumn when weed seeds won't have nice warm conditions to germinate and grow faster than I can deal with it. It's also cooler to work.
My neighbour rotovated every year for many years until he moved into a care home and his soil is useless. I've spent the last two tears trying to remediate it with green manures and any organics I can add in the hop that when the place does sell the garden will be workable and the new owner will be more inclined to garden on it rather than slab it over as so many other householders in the area have done. It's a losing battle as though there's nutrition in the soil there's no air permeation and the drainage is poor, which in itself benefits weed species and moss.
The radishes, mustard, phacelia, sunflowers are barely above my ankles.
Maybe you've already started?
But it's chalk in the Dover area with 8 inches of grey soil ontop. Where there is grass it is thin. They say wild flowers like the soil not to be very fertile, and if I grow them instead of grass I will be adding chalk and not top soil.
But will it be nice having wild flowers around the patio area? I'm not so sure. Wild flowers come and go leaving the twiggy stalks. Not a great sight right outside your wiindows when the heads are gone. The stalks only look good on the horizon against the sky.
I guess it will be grass and the wild flower experiments done away from the house. Topsoil will be needed with pre seed fertilizer I expect. With the rubble out I think it will be best to rotovate all this in but maybe not deep. Say 4 inches plus depth of added soild. Otherwise I'll bring up the chalk making it very alkaline.
Right now I'm moving in and the garden is a nightmare because it is huge, has never really been a garden, has been overgrown for a decade or two. My first garden at that. It really is daunting and dare I say a little scarey.
It's a nice idea but I'm not sure I would like to see brown cut down stalks instead of grass immediately outside the windows and patio area in Autumn. Maybe I'm too clinical about things immediately around me. Each to their own. I would like to see wild flowers growing in the perimeter of the garden and a fan out from one rear garden corner towards the house.