Advice for our garden
bigbob77
Posts: 1
I need some advice for our back garden.
It was a new-build house 2 years ago, and the back was basically a big heap of crap. Massive clumps of clay, thousands of rocks and a thick covering of 6 foot high weeds.
My short-term aim was to make it "functional" (for dogs to play in, BBQs, etc) and my budget was £50. So I bought a landscaping rake, a bag of grass seed, weedkiller and 100 rubble sacks. A massive amount of blood and sweat (and a few months) later, all 100 rubble sacks had gone to the recycling centre full of rocks and clay, each one weighing around 35kg. I was a broken man.
I smoothed out the soil as well as I could on my own with only a landscaping rake (ie. not very well), spread grass seed and watered. Here is the result 2 years on:
You can see there are bare patches everywhere. I have raked and re-seeded those areas but it still grows in really patchy. I'm guessing the soil is too low quality or there are still rocks/clay patches underneath (very likely, I only removed them from the surface, I didn't dig down).
Here is a close-up of a particularly bad area:
But even the "good" areas are still [b]very[/b] lumpy because I didn't smooth it down well.
I'd like to fill in the patches so the dogs don't drag mud into the house and so it looks a bit better. If I could also reduce the lumpiness that would be a bonus.
I have access to common garden tools, a few big bags of B&Q soil, lots of grass seed, a lawnmower and a scarifier.
Budget is basically zero. We're planning to completely redesign and renovate the garden in a couple of years so we don't want to invest any money in it now.
My plan (which may be wrong, please tell me) is:
1) Cut the grass short
2) Scarify
3) Spread a thin layer of soil over the entire area
4) Re-seed
Will that help?
Posts
Hi BB
IMO - that lawn doesn't look too bad considering what you had to start with & the limited budget.
If you are redoing the garden completely soon it makes good sense not spending too much money on it now.
You are probably correct that the lawn is growing unevenly because of what is underneath and that would also account for some of the ups and downs.
I'm no groundsman but your plan seems reasonable enough.
I don't think I'd waste energy scarifying at this stage - there's probably not that much thatch to remove.
If there are a lot of bare patches - a general spread of compost and seed will help.
You could also concentrate some soil/compost into the pockets - compact it down by walking on it and reseed - this will help even the lawn out.
It might also be that your lawn looks bad at the moment because it's coming out of a wet winter and cold spring - so a spring lawn feed might help as well
Hi bigbob77
From what I can see you have worked miracles! I would only think about the bare patches. Use soil where necessary on those areas to even up the surface and re-seed. Don't scarify until the lawn is really mature as you may only undo your good work. Keep the grass cut but not too short. Give it a chance to build up a sward. Good luck.
Bigbob, you do have a problem the bottom line being the budget, lawns do not come cheap in any form and rectifying that would cost. Watching the new builds around me you see the builder take off all the topsoil down to clay and sell it, part of their spoils. They run all over with machines compacting it even tipping waste cement and rubblsh, then house built you get six inches of soil and rolls of cheap grass, here they also got a shed clothes line and half a dozen paves. Two years later it costs big money to get it all out and done properly.
You can prepare to do it yourself a long job or hard pave the worst area's for now, another way is to cut and turn those turves over then top with good soil and reseed, costly. The best method would be leave it until the budget increases then get some one in to prepare the ground for rolls of good turf.
Sorry I cannot give you a quick fix there isn't one, having helped maintain a bowling green plus my own two lawns knowing the hours of back breaking work needed to renew sections we would all wish for an easier way. Of course you could make the dogs wear welly's.
Good luck Frank.