I also didn't follow your advice with aerating the lawn. Decided to go out and do it today because the grass never seems to dry out. I didnt cut the grass first but tried raking out some of the moss. Made it really muddy. Then I did some aeration and tipped sharp sand into each individual hole which took a very long time. Treading on the lawn to do that made it even muddier. I think I'm doing it all wrong. When you stand out there in the quiet, you can hear bubbling sounds.
I feel your pain, Splandy. Last house we lived in the soil was like pot clay and the builders had tipped so much rubble onto it there were sections where I couldn't get a even a hand fork into the ground without hitting something. I vividly remember one Spring morning when my husband came out to find me sitting on the ground just weeping with the frustration of trying to do anything with it. But it turned out OK. We only lived there for 3 years so it didn't take very long to get grass and some plants established
I got the grass established by top dressing the rubbly sections with compost, letting the worms work it in for a few weeks and then seeding it. I just couldn't dig all the rubbish out and digging seemed to be counter-productive because it was moving more stuff to just below the surface. I reckon I got about 4 inches cleared and then stopped and added 3 or 4 inches of compost so there was probably 6 inches of 'soil' for the grass to grow in. It was always a bit too bumpy for bowling but for kicking a ball around and playing with the dog it was fine by the end of the first summer. The bits that were just too heavy defined the route of the path. The plants were mostly roses and annuals to get colour quickly.
Last edited: 07 March 2017 18:21:19
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
It was quite gruesome and my husband swore he could still smell it on himself. I'm not too bothered by smells but knowing it was there was unpleasant. The bag was quite small so I think could only have been a pet.
I could dig holes and pour water in but I'm not sure what it would achieve since I already know the water doesn't drain well. Is there a particular reason to do this? When I aerated the lawn yesterday, I could see water almost to the top of the holes. I don't think it's rubble from when the house was built. Having seen the cut corners with the rest of the house, I think it was the previous owner who has done this. The area we're digging all of this junk out of was levelled by them as it was originally a slope. According to my next door neighbour, the fence at the bottom of my garden used to be slightly further back, but they put in a new fence closer to the house. When you look behind the fence, there is a load of rubble chucked behind there, too.
Raisingirl, is that a photo of the clay and rubble garden you only had for three years?? It looks beautiful! I've already been here for three years and mine is a state ?
I am so pleased you resolved your stinky problem. How about dousing the whole area where it is smelly with a solution of water and Jeyes fluid. It may help and will not do any harm. It will smell like a public toilet for a bit but that must be better than the smell of a dead animal.
It sounds as if you are on a hiding to nothing if the previous house owners levelled the garden with rubble. This should mean rapid draining so why it should be so wet I cannot guess. My garden is very gritty and fast draining except that it is also very shallow, only a spade depth. My problem is a sheet of compacted shale which needs a pneumatic drill to break it up. I have puddles all over the place in heavy rain so have resorted to making raised beds where I want to plant up. I cannot afford to bring in lorry loads of top soil so am using my own compost plus used compost from containers, a slow way to do it but cost effective.
Is there a cracked pipe or something somewhere. That sounds awfully wet - even for clay. Is the water coming from below, rather than rain? It looks like the previous owner was a bodger and a lazy b****r so it might be worth investigating
Raisingirl, is that a photo of the clay and rubble garden you only had for three years?? It looks beautiful! I've already been here for three years and mine is a state ?
Yes it is. That was the garden that taught me it's better to work with what I had rather than trying to superimpose a plan of what I would ideally have liked - the latter nearly killed me after the first 6 months (not helped by the place being over-run with rabbits and then there were the roots of the big tree who's trunk you can see in the picture.) So instead of a path here and a lawn there with a border just so and these sort of plants, I had a path where I simply couldn't plant anything, a lawn in the area where I could get enough soil to sustain one and wild and semi-wild plants that are pretty but not on any garden fashionista's 'hit list'. Had we stayed there my plan was to gradually 'fill in' the worst blanks by tackling a small bit at a time, when I had time. But I found it important to get an overall impression that was pleasing and which I could enjoy being out in rather than what I started with, which was grim and depressing and just made me want to hide indoors and hope it would go away.
Have you thought about making a different surface for the childrens' play equipment? An area with bark chips instead of grass say, which might make a better all weather surface anyway and would require the renovation of the rubble pit to the same extent? All you'd need to do is get it fairly flat and remove glass that's at the surface. Then cover it with heavy duty landscape fabric, make a raised edge using gravel boards and fill it in with a few bags of play bark. Nice and clean, nice a soft, won't hold water.....? I know it';s not going to look as pristine as continuous lawn but maybe you need to give yourself an easy win somewhere to get you motivated?
B3 makes a good point. Either a cracked pipe or an inadequate soakaway would water-log the ground. Do you know where the rainwater pipes from the roof go once they get to the ground?
Last edited: 08 March 2017 10:34:19
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
I don't think I'm explaining things very clearly, perhaps photos would help. The area they levelled was underneath the greenhouse and shed. The garden slopes downwards and is slightly flatter at the bottom. They scooped up the ground to make a flat area for a greenhouse and a flatish area avice for a shed. I'm reinstating the slope, so it matches the rest of the garden whilst maybe trying to keep it a bit flatter at the bottom for play.
The area underneath the greenhouse is mainly clay, I think. Oddly enough, the flattened area at the bottom seems to be much more like normal soil. It's much easier to dig, it's not sticky and it's not got puddles of water in it. There's also no rubble there so far so it seems they've done it to put the greenhouse on?
There are no water pipes at the back as far as I'm aware, it all comes from the front. Water from the guttering drains at the front. There are no drains or taps at the back of the house. One thing that is an issue - there has been a conservatory added on. The guttering for this drains straight onto the garden. The house guttering Also leaks onto the conservatory where it joins the neighbours', so that is on the garden too. I'm hoping to fit a slimline water butt onto the pipe to stop it going onto the garden. Almost bought one at b&q yesterday but hadn't done any research and didn't know what I was doing so I didn't. That's something I'd like to get done ASAP. Do you think that will make a big difference to the wetness of the lawn? I wasn't sure whether the amount of water landing on a conservatory would make a noticeable difference.
Also think we may have found another dead cat. There is a blanket but no bag. It doesn't smell. I don't think I'm going to dig it out because it's more in the border than the lawn and there are currant bushes there so it doesnt seem to be affecting anything.
Posts
I also didn't follow your advice with aerating the lawn. Decided to go out and do it today because the grass never seems to dry out. I didnt cut the grass first but tried raking out some of the moss. Made it really muddy. Then I did some aeration and tipped sharp sand into each individual hole which took a very long time. Treading on the lawn to do that made it even muddier. I think I'm doing it all wrong. When you stand out there in the quiet, you can hear bubbling sounds.
I feel your pain, Splandy. Last house we lived in the soil was like pot clay and the builders had tipped so much rubble onto it there were sections where I couldn't get a even a hand fork into the ground without hitting something. I vividly remember one Spring morning when my husband came out to find me sitting on the ground just weeping with the frustration of trying to do anything with it. But it turned out OK. We only lived there for 3 years so it didn't take very long to get grass and some plants established
I got the grass established by top dressing the rubbly sections with compost, letting the worms work it in for a few weeks and then seeding it. I just couldn't dig all the rubbish out and digging seemed to be counter-productive because it was moving more stuff to just below the surface. I reckon I got about 4 inches cleared and then stopped and added 3 or 4 inches of compost so there was probably 6 inches of 'soil' for the grass to grow in. It was always a bit too bumpy for bowling but for kicking a ball around and playing with the dog it was fine by the end of the first summer. The bits that were just too heavy defined the route of the path. The plants were mostly roses and annuals to get colour quickly.
Last edited: 07 March 2017 18:21:19
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
It was quite gruesome and my husband swore he could still smell it on himself. I'm not too bothered by smells but knowing it was there was unpleasant. The bag was quite small so I think could only have been a pet.
I could dig holes and pour water in but I'm not sure what it would achieve since I already know the water doesn't drain well. Is there a particular reason to do this? When I aerated the lawn yesterday, I could see water almost to the top of the holes. I don't think it's rubble from when the house was built. Having seen the cut corners with the rest of the house, I think it was the previous owner who has done this. The area we're digging all of this junk out of was levelled by them as it was originally a slope. According to my next door neighbour, the fence at the bottom of my garden used to be slightly further back, but they put in a new fence closer to the house. When you look behind the fence, there is a load of rubble chucked behind there, too.
Raisingirl, is that a photo of the clay and rubble garden you only had for three years?? It looks beautiful! I've already been here for three years and mine is a state ?
I am so pleased you resolved your stinky problem. How about dousing the whole area where it is smelly with a solution of water and Jeyes fluid. It may help and will not do any harm. It will smell like a public toilet for a bit but that must be better than the smell of a dead animal.
It sounds as if you are on a hiding to nothing if the previous house owners levelled the garden with rubble. This should mean rapid draining so why it should be so wet I cannot guess. My garden is very gritty and fast draining except that it is also very shallow, only a spade depth. My problem is a sheet of compacted shale which needs a pneumatic drill to break it up. I have puddles all over the place in heavy rain so have resorted to making raised beds where I want to plant up. I cannot afford to bring in lorry loads of top soil so am using my own compost plus used compost from containers, a slow way to do it but cost effective.
Is there a cracked pipe or something somewhere. That sounds awfully wet - even for clay. Is the water coming from below, rather than rain? It looks like the previous owner was a bodger and a lazy b****r so it might be worth investigating
Yes it is. That was the garden that taught me it's better to work with what I had rather than trying to superimpose a plan of what I would ideally have liked - the latter nearly killed me after the first 6 months (not helped by the place being over-run with rabbits and then there were the roots of the big tree who's trunk you can see in the picture.) So instead of a path here and a lawn there with a border just so and these sort of plants, I had a path where I simply couldn't plant anything, a lawn in the area where I could get enough soil to sustain one and wild and semi-wild plants that are pretty but not on any garden fashionista's 'hit list'. Had we stayed there my plan was to gradually 'fill in' the worst blanks by tackling a small bit at a time, when I had time. But I found it important to get an overall impression that was pleasing and which I could enjoy being out in rather than what I started with, which was grim and depressing and just made me want to hide indoors and hope it would go away.
Have you thought about making a different surface for the childrens' play equipment? An area with bark chips instead of grass say, which might make a better all weather surface anyway and would require the renovation of the rubble pit to the same extent? All you'd need to do is get it fairly flat and remove glass that's at the surface. Then cover it with heavy duty landscape fabric, make a raised edge using gravel boards and fill it in with a few bags of play bark. Nice and clean, nice a soft, won't hold water.....? I know it';s not going to look as pristine as continuous lawn but maybe you need to give yourself an easy win somewhere to get you motivated?
B3 makes a good point. Either a cracked pipe or an inadequate soakaway would water-log the ground. Do you know where the rainwater pipes from the roof go once they get to the ground?
Last edited: 08 March 2017 10:34:19
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
not - would NOT require renovation of the rubble pit. That limited edit function can be annoying, can't it?
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
I don't think I'm explaining things very clearly, perhaps photos would help. The area they levelled was underneath the greenhouse and shed. The garden slopes downwards and is slightly flatter at the bottom. They scooped up the ground to make a flat area for a greenhouse and a flatish area avice for a shed. I'm reinstating the slope, so it matches the rest of the garden whilst maybe trying to keep it a bit flatter at the bottom for play.
The area underneath the greenhouse is mainly clay, I think. Oddly enough, the flattened area at the bottom seems to be much more like normal soil. It's much easier to dig, it's not sticky and it's not got puddles of water in it. There's also no rubble there so far so it seems they've done it to put the greenhouse on?
There are no water pipes at the back as far as I'm aware, it all comes from the front. Water from the guttering drains at the front. There are no drains or taps at the back of the house. One thing that is an issue - there has been a conservatory added on. The guttering for this drains straight onto the garden. The house guttering Also leaks onto the conservatory where it joins the neighbours', so that is on the garden too. I'm hoping to fit a slimline water butt onto the pipe to stop it going onto the garden. Almost bought one at b&q yesterday but hadn't done any research and didn't know what I was doing so I didn't. That's something I'd like to get done ASAP. Do you think that will make a big difference to the wetness of the lawn? I wasn't sure whether the amount of water landing on a conservatory would make a noticeable difference.
Also think we may have found another dead cat. There is a blanket but no bag. It doesn't smell. I don't think I'm going to dig it out because it's more in the border than the lawn and there are currant bushes there so it doesnt seem to be affecting anything.