Recovering wilderness to garden

Having followed some earlier advice about how to go about removing / killing very dense nettles, thistles, brambles from our new "garden" (well, land anyway), I'm wondering how to prepare the soil.
All is now strimmed back to a few inches high having first sprayed with "Roundup". However, this will still leave very thick root systems (although hopefully dead).
I don't think a rotovator would cope, and maybe it would be a bad idea anyway, but bigging it all out by hand would be a mammoth task beyond my capability.
Any advice on how to proceed greatly appreciated.

 

I did thi s last year reclaiming wilderness. Did dig by hand as we had such a lovely autumn we just did it bit by bit. I have battled with tryig to do this for uyears adnnever got the whole plot under control before and so it would revert very easily. From my experience it is important to get control of the perennial weeds. So even if you dont go for the roots I woudl say keep cutting them off. I am plagued by dock nettle bramble gorse and Rose bay willow herb.
Raised beds really helped as the weeds can be so easily pulled out of the soft non compacted soil.

Also last year after digging I sowed a crop of organic white clover seeds and I think that helped too to take up soem of the room and to fertilise the soil digging it in before it seeded.

I dont know about your situation but my garden is surrounded by wilderness too so we go outside it to to shear down all surrounding weeds so theyu dont seed into the garden. I found that laying down the paths was helpful too.
Hope some of this helps. It was incredibly hard work and the weeding is still constant.

 

Mpeill it seems like you have plenty of work to keep you busy I'm sure it will look wonderful after you have worked your magic and rested you poor back! Good luck.
Helen.xxx.

 

It depends how long you can wait to take control of your borders. Do you have a lawn? Because they are very useful for killing off even perrenial weeds. Lay sheets of newspaper onto your borders, then mow your lawn and put that on the newspaper. It will biodegrade into compost and in the mean time also starve the weeds from light

And kill them :D

Its the long term organic solution though, i did this to my border in feb, and haven't had a single thing out of it yet since clearing it 3 months later and turning it all over.

 

The nettles, thistles and brambles ... pull them out at the roots
The suggestion about newspaper ... a good idea ... I did this a few years ago and it works brilliantly. Two layers of newspaper and some composted bark
Just realise that there is no easy way to a lovely garden

 

I'm a great believer in the flame gun burn off all the top growth of weeds you may have to repeat the process a couple of times, it kills the weed seeds gives immense satisfaction non chemical.