Garden Lawn

I am new to gardening so pease bare with me. I have large back lawn that is in need of replacement, how do I go about this? do i need to remove all the existing lawn which needs to be levelled out and then re seed or can i just rotovate the lawn and level out and then re seed.

All advice would be appreciated.
Regards
Steve

 

Are you sure that it needs replacement, and not an amount of TLC rescueing to restore it back to beautiful turf again. Whats its problems at the moment.

If you remove and then seed its going to be a year or two before it looks like a good lawn. Returfing will give you a quicker finish.

 

The problem with the lawn is it has different heights in different places and I would like to level this out it also has a lot of moss and rubbish that has been left for years. There were some old greenhouses that had been there for years also and a pond that have now been removed. I dont want ot go down the road of turfing as I would like to give it a go myself. The soil around loks very good we also back onto a farmers field so I am guessing a bit that the soil will be ok. It looks ok in other gardens on the street.

Regards
Steve

 

Hi Steve

How much time do you have to spend on this? It is not a little job and is likely to take you ages of pretty hard work. First off you will need to get rid of the existing turf. Either dig it up, use a turf cutter, or spray the lot with Glyphosate and wait till it dies. Be careful if you decide to spray as it will kill anything green it touches. (also looks terrible when grass is dying) Then you will need to get rid of any greenhouse foundations and rubbish. The next step is to cultivate, either by digging or rotovating. Then firm it up a bit by treading it down with your feet. Rake the lumps and bumps flat and remove big stones. Rake the rest to a fine tilth. Add fertilizer as per directions, a 1:1:1 is best for seed bed I think. Select a mixture of seed that will meet your requirements (fine lawn, hard wearing etc) and sow at the rate indicated on the bag. Keep watered. Leave it till it is about 12cm high before giving it its first cut to about 7cm. Exact heights are not that important. Cutting will encourage tillering which will give you the tight carpet that you are after. Im sure others will have variations on this but this has worked for me. I can not stress enough how hard work this is and if there is any chance that you wont have time to do it right I would get a professional in to do it for you. The worst thing you could do is cut corners at this stage as it shows up forever.

Remember that even if you do the best job in the world a good lawn takes lots of continuing work to keep it looking good and if you just cut it and dont feed, weed, rake and fork it regularly you will end up with the same problems as you have with the old lawn in no time. :eek:

Have you tried feeding and scarifying the existing lawn to see if it revives?

Alternatively forget the grass and grow vegies and flowers. :D I am gradually digging wider and wider borders as i hate cutting grass and much prefer flowers.

Good luck whatever you decide