need information on laying grass seed

Happy bank holiday every one, hope all have had a good day.

ive recently moved to a new house, and the back garden had these stone chippings, so today in the glorious weather ive stripped it back, and removed the weed sheet, so now ive got a sort of clayish stamped down garden, with some really bad weed patches.

id like to seed it, as this is the cheapest option than turfing, i understand prep is the most important to the end result, so ive still got a bit more prepping, such as removing the odd few stones etc.

so my questions are

1. how do i treat these weed patches, what is the best method?
2. some areas are sunken like craters, how do i fill these?
3. do i need to rotivate or can i seed as is or do i need to fork it over so its not so flat?
4. whats the best sort of good value seed, i think i need around 2kg.

thats all for now, more questions will probaly come later.

many thanks in advance
phil

 

Welcome to GC mrphil.

If you'd like to take a look at the Lawns forum here on GC there are a lot of threads there that will help you sort out your lawn issues.

 

Hello and welcome.

I did my lawn from seed at the beginning of last year (its not the patch you might see in my photo albums on here).

The ground was severely compacted, starved clay. I dug the whole lot over by hand and levelled it as best I could. I let it settle for a couple of weeks, and then levelled it again. Then I simply scattered seed on it and made sure it was kept watered until it started to get established.

I was flat broke at the time, so didn't add anything to the soil to improve the structure, but I would have if I could have afforded it. A few weeks later I had enough dosh to order a couple of pallet loads of spent mushroom compost. I top dressed my new lawn with this by simply flinging handfuls of the stuff onto the emerging lawn, taking care not gently work it in and not cover the new grass. I'm pretty sure it was the wrong way round (should have improved the soil first before sowing the seed) but its worked.

I didn't put as much prep into it as you're supposed to, and I've mostly got away with it but my lawn does have some lumps and bumps where different patches have settled at different rates, and I'm going to have to top dress quite heavily in autumn in an attempt to rectify that.

 

You need to dig it over to 9" deep (or rotavate if you can get a rotavator into the ground at this time of year - depends how heavy your soil is).

Then break up and clods and firm it.

The make it level (e.g. my towing something across it)

Then rake a seedbed

Then sow the seed evenly.

Autumn sown grass is, IMHO, infinitely preferable to Spring sown, and you have a month or so before sowing season starts, so enough time for the preparation.

You can kill any weeds with weedkiller first (a Glyphosate based weedkiller as that will kill anything it touches, but is neutralised when it hits the soil so won't kill the grass seed in a few weeks time). Glyphosate will take 2 weeks to kill the weeds, and you may not see much evidence that it is working in the first week - so don't panic! - but that also means that you won't see nay bits that you missed for 2 weeks.

See these threads for more detailed description:
http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/threads/what-would-you-do-with-this.45848/#post-583214