Lawn like a building site...
BRISTOL86
Posts: 78
Hi Guys
New homeowner and wannabe gardener here looking for some help please!
We have just moved into our first home and when we viewed the property the lawn looked lovely, though in need of a serious cut!
Having tried to get started today, I only needed to strim down a very small area to see that I had a big issue....the garden is like a building site.
Amongst the things I found after strimming an 8ft square area are bits of broken ceramic tile, grass, electrical cable, screws, drill bits, stones of all shapes and sizes...
How does one go about sorting this mess out?! I think it's got the potential to be a lovely garden but it's clear that when the seller was renovating the house, they chucked every bit of building waste out in the garden before seeding over it!
Is it best to dig up by hand and essentially start over? It's not a massive garden (about 5m x 3m) but I have no idea where to start!
All help gratefully appreciated!
Thanks
Posts
The first thing I'd do is to give your solicitor a call and see if you're liable for someone else's rubbish. I suspect they'll say you should have checked beforehand, but worth a go.
Unfortuantely there are no real short cuts , you really do need to get rid of it all , properly , and start from scratch. Trust me, if you try short cuts, they'll come back to haunt you later.
Methinks a skip, or a few runs to " the tip" are in order before you start to "garden"
All part of the excitement though.
I can't be bothered to make a fuss about it, I just want to get on with it to be honest!
I don't mind a bit of graft, and if I learn things from it then so much the better!
So how do I actually go about it? Dig the whole "plot" up with a spade and remove a layer essentially? How deep do I need to go? Then what? Replace with top soil, level it off and then re-seed?
I'm a complete novice with all of this I must say, but willing to learn
Yeah you've got it! Hand dig over the whole area
that way you can pick out all the unwanted rubbish and bin it. It's far better in the end, and you'll be very pleased with yourself.
When I aquired an additional plot at the side of our garden, there was all sorts of rubbish and weeds/unwanted stuff, as you go along digging you'll find a difference in the ground, some will want more attention, just play it by ear you'll be ok at one spade for a lawn and a bit more for borders. Best of luck.
Thanks!
I would guess the previous owner piled all their rubbish on the garden whilst renovating before removing it so you might be lucky enough to get away with just raking the area over to get rid of it. If not just by digging in a small area you should be able to ascertain how far the rubbish goes down. Hopefully its just sitting on the top, Good luck !
But im guessing digging away the top layer is going to be a lot easier with the grass strimmed down as much as possible.
take some before and after photos to prove to yourself how much you've achieved, ( and we want to see them too)
If you are going to dig it all over to remove the debris, you could just use weedkiller on the grass rather than strimming, but obviously consider the implications on pets or kids of making the whole garden 'toxic' for a week or so.
I'm not sure about flowers and shrubs, for most vegetables the advice is to dig the plot 2 spades deep to loosen the soil up enough for the roots. A good lawn needs the subsoil not to be too compacted so it is probably worth trying to do the whole lot 2 spades deep whilst you have a blank canvas to work on and set yourself up as well as you can for whatever your future plans are. The soil will seem a little high for a while but will soon shrink down again.