overgrown garden need help where to start

enough already

 

That`s a no, then.:gnthb:

 

Heather

If you've already thought about animals to help keep the wilderness down, how about trying a couple of pigs - speak to your local farmer.

If you strim, I would use a brush cutter you will still have to clear up the debris.

You've a lot of land and it will nede decent equipment (professional ) to not only clear up but also to maintain.

Make a plan of what you want to do and what you want from the garden and then create a schedule of what needs to done and when. It actually will be fantastic fun and I envy you enormously.

enjoy

 

We started off with the same sort of garden as you; an acre of brambles and weeds. We began clearing through the winter by hand (don't like weed killer) and uncovered several flower beds and patches of daffies. The first year was spent clearing each area systematically and looking at what was already growing there before making any plans of our own. As you can see we have made a big difference in just 3 years. Take your time and it won't become a nightmare, I weed over a weekend every 2-3 months and it doesn't kill me! Moles are our biggest problem at the moment!

 

It would be a mistake to spray the garden, like Celia I say take your time. Strange that you should be dreading the spring, I am getting quite bored of the frost now and can`t wait. Weeding is an excuse to spend time in the garden-a wonderful place, take your time and as you go round the ideas for the tools etc will come naturally as you go.

You`re quite lucky really, plenty of space to let your imagination go wild.

Good Luck

 

As a professional Gardener who like David regularly tackles this sort of thing, I agree with him 100%. To reiterate, strim down and rake up the vegetation now, then spray off the new growth in the spring. Tackling small areas and making fancy plans is good in theory but in reality the cleared areas will become infested by seeds from the uncleared areas.

Get a handle on the worst of the weeds THEN make your plans.

As for a weedkiller, Use roundup. Worth buying a Knapsack sprayer for the task, with a gravel drive and lawns, you'll always have plenty of use for it. Get a sensible quantity of roundup either from your next door farmer, a farmers merchant or a horticultural supplier, horticultural/ agricultural roundup is a different formulation from that sold in garden centers and works out cheaper and more effective. I buy mine from:

http://www.amenity.co.uk/webstore/product_info.php?cPath=1017&products_id=106

 

I can`t argue with either David or Paul about the use of weedkiller, they are professional gardeners who use the stuff on a regular basis, and in the hands of an experienced professional I`m sure it has a useful place. They`ll know how to avoid any over spray, thereby avoid killing other plants, they`ll know quantities and qualities of differing stuff-it`s their job.

But in the hands of someone with little experience, it`s a menace.


On a personal note, I don`t use the stuff, I have in the past but won`t ever use it again-hence my advice-and yes I have been guilty of flora-cide. To my shame.

I do think gardening is often written off as boring and yet with such differing opinions I can`t understand why. "Fancy plans eh?" Cheeky beggar, good job I know you.

 

Claire, to prevent windrift and over spray, it is possible to buy a hood which fits at the end of the sprayer lance.:gnthb: I`ll take a photo tomorrow.

 

You can spray quite safely with this attachement, which is readily available.

 

Thanks David, hindsight gives me remarkable clarity of vision-unfortunately at the time of the crime I just went a bit gungho with the roundup, it took me four years of hard work to build back up what I lost in one afternoon.

 

Here's my 2p worth:

(FWIW I'm on my third "from-scratch" garden, each has been more than 5 acres, and a rental house with established 1 acre garden in the middle)

Strim anything green and not woody - i.e. leave the shrubs and trees alone, cut down all the herbaceous plants (and weeds).

If you have not been there a year don't do anything until you have - and until you have good records of what-is-where. You can easily spend £1,000 / acre per year for 5 years creating a plant collection, if you've got plants I would suggest rescuing what you want to keep before you start the destructive gardening phase.

Make a plan, mark on it what-is-where. Tag everything you want to keep (cane + label), and photograph the whole lot from every angle every week or two. Take close ups of anything in flower (I take a wide angle shot, then a close up, so I can pin-point where the close up is).

I made a holding bed for the plants I wanted to keep - I had the local farmer plough part of mine, then I hired a mini-tractor + rotavator, and we just started shoving things in there as we changed an area of the garden, and then things that survived we moved in the Autumn to clean beds and more appropriate location. That gave me time to get the "nursery" plants clean of their weeds [I removed all the soil and crud that I could on planting, and either hand weeded thereafter, or sprayed with Glyphosphate/Roundup. I did my best to keep it off the plants, but we lost a few of course ... but my point was to rescue as much as possible, but not to the point of killing myself rather than the weeds!

We used the rest of the ploughed area to start a vegetable garden.

I have had an area prepared for Herbaceous plants for two years now; that will be planted in the spring. I have sprayed that with Glyphosphate three or four times a year, and still the weeds come back with avengance. So although the soil has been well fallowed, I am planning to plant through mulch fabric because I will never be able to control the weeds by hand (I suppose that bed is about 1500-2000 sq.m)

Don't spray anything until the weeds are growing in the Spring, contact herbicides will not do much now, and the weeds aren't going to grow during the Winter, so you'd only be wasting your money.

If you have any shrubs in places where you want to keep them put some mulching fabric round them - easy to clear the weeds and crud under them between now and March, and put the fabric down, and that will make them pretty much weed-free so you can concentrate on other things.

You can have a look at my blog to see how far I've got in 2.5 years if you like!

 

I reckon, on Broadband, having the max posts per page works best for me:

User CP : Edit Options : "Thread Display Options" : Number of Posts to Show Per Page

Set to max (40 I think)

YMMV of course

 

One thing john, Roundup at certain doses is aproved for aquatic weed control, it will kill pond vegatation but is actualy harmless to fish and pond life.

******Not that i would advocate this use.********