An anti-lawn queston

Hi there,

I am building a new house and SWMBO is in charge of the garden. At the moment, the garden is grass of various types and a lot of moss. it has not been maintained apart form the occasional cutting.

SWMBO has a big landscape plan, that involves getting rid of quite a lot of the grass areas.

My question, what is the best way to do this?

Tried a turf cutter to turn the turf upside down, but it will take forever and was not really man enough for the job.

Weed killer? Rotovator and hope the grass does not grow again. Combination of the last two?

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Many thanks,

Rex

 

I think the best way to remove cut grass (rather than soil-full-of-weeds or uncut, shaggy, grass-brambles-and-weeds, is to strip it off and either bury it in the digging process, or stack it to rot down and make nice loam (which requires a space to stack it of course). I've hired motorised turf-cutters for that job in the past. They are a bit mediocre IME, but they do do the job if you use them right.

Weed killer (Glyphosate/Round-up - although worth checking whether the Diquat in Resolva, which also has Glyphosate, would work better on predominately grass) and then rotavate/plough is a resonable approach.

IME Round-up never kills everything, but if you can then "fallow" the soil for a bit, all the perennial weeds that weren't killed, plus all the germinating seeds (that were going to grow anyway!), can be killed off by a further application of weed killer.

Glyphosate/Roundup : apply when you are guaranteed to get at least 6 hours of dry weather, and absolutely no wind to drift the chemical onto anything you want to keep. Wait 2 weeks then things will turn yellow, reapply to anything you missed the first time, wait another 2 weeks, then rotavate/plough/etc.

Resolva has the benefit that it will turn anything it is killing yellow within 24 hours :thumb:

 

As above.

 

Kristen,

Thanks for the reply. My wife has read that the turf cutter approach, when turned over and left to dry, will kill all the grass. Personally, I am not so sure; one good rain and I can imagine it all growing again.

But, it did seem to work for the few hours that I was struggling to use it. I guess because the grass/moss combination has such a good root base, and our thin layer of topsoil is over clay, it was really struggling, as was I. After a few hours of fighting the machine and only about 50 meters of turf cut, I returned it to the hire shop. It was not an smal machine, but did not have the guts to cut the turf easily. Perhaps the soil was not damp / wet enough?

I have hired a prof. rotovator in the past and that does a really good job, down to about 9 to 12" deep. Don't mind hiring it again, but that will only cut up and bury the grass / moss, which is not what my wife wants.

I'll past on your suggestions regarding the various chemicals.

Rex

 

I think the trick with a turf cutter is:

Hire the biggest one you can find. Heavy helps too.

Turf must be "soft". The instructions say to water well the night before, I doubt that would do much good on our clay soil in dry weather. I hired mine the day the rain stopped - it had been raining for a week even so it was hard work.

The real problem with the ones I have hired is that the forward speed cannot be set slow enough. It wants to race ahead, and it is not possible to keep the cutting blade buried, and cutting, at fast speed. The shop's advice was to put it on very low revs ... which reduces speed, but the cutter blade then struggles. Standing on it may help too.

We ran it in neutral. I pushed, and a chum pulled a rope attached to the front. Did a fine job (although hard work!)

The cutter bounces on stones, and then comes through the surface. No way around that, except to be alert to it, go back over that bit and try again.

A plough has a little blade in front of the main plough share; that scraps the top inch or so into the furrow, which is then immediately buried by the bigger blade. Putting the turf, upside down, in the bottom of the digging (using a conventional digging process - make a trench across the plot, loosen bottom (with fork), add manure etc. and upside-down turf (from the next strip), then turn the next strip into the trench, and repeat) will not allow the grass to grow, and as it rots down it will provide good moisture retaining humus for the plants that are planted there.

 

Turf cutters are ok but the secret as Kristen aludes to is to stand on the back, being fairly light I stand up with both legs on it on it also a breze block on the front of the machine........ Its a hire machine so abuse it just dont break it lol!!!

 

Or you could borrow all your friends/family'd dogs (bitches) and let them wee on it for a few days and bobs your uncle, dead grass

 

Wow, thanks for the replies. Really like the dog suggestion!

Reckon I did not have the ground wet enough, which may help. I don't think standing on it would have helped as it seemed to be swaying around the cutting blade. On the bits where it worked, it was great, but when I look at how much there is to do, ......*******

A neighbour suggested covering the grass with black plastic sheeting for a few weeks. No light, no water and heat will soon kill everything under, then hire a rotovator.

SWMBO has been talking with some landscape gardeners, who suggest a turf cutter and taking the turf away, then replacing with top soil. That is the expensive option.

The lawn has not had anything done for years. It is not flat and smooth. SWMBO wants to re-landscape the whole lot, so killing the grass/moss is her first plan of attack. Then some topsoil to level/smooth the grass areas of the plan and reseed.

May be a larger turf cutter is what I needed? I have seen some professional one through web browsing but they do not seem to be available from hire shops.

Rex