Reviving 'Lawn' after building work

Firstly hi all, newbie here.

I've recently completed a barn conversion that stands in a 1600m² 'U' shaped area of what was once a great lawn. All of which now needs serious attention and I'm unsure of the best way to proceed.

Half of it has been trenched and backfilled to lay a GSHP collector pipe. With a good cut this would look OK if it wasn't for all of the trench settlement. Would the best way to proceed be to rotovate and level the whole area and add new grass seed? Will the old grass come back through? Or should I weedkill the whole lot then proceed?

The other half has been completely decimated and is going to require a machine to bring it to level first. It is now more weeds than grass so I assume it would be prudent to weedkill this area before trying to return it to lawn?

All advice gratefully received. Barns I can do, gardens, lawns and plants - no idea!

TIA

Daniel

 

Personally I would get a turf cutter and run it along the length of the GSHP settlement "rows" and lift the turf; apply some topsoil to the "rows", and then replace the turf. Firm down well, put a leaky-hose on them to irrigate if we get a dry April or May, then you should be away. This is based on the grass being GOOD!

For the other area sounds like:

Spray with Glyphosphate / Roundup to kill the weeds. It will kill everything it touches, so don't let any wind carry the spray, and careful where you walk after applying the weed killer!

Leave for at least 2 weeks for everything to die. Spot-spray anything you missed (ideally leave some more, but not totally necessary).

Rotavate lightly. Don't Get/Hire a Merry Tiller type, get one with self propelled wheels with the rotors behind (or a mini tractor with a PTO drive Rotavator on the rear arms).

Level - I use a ladder with some blocks on it to weight it down, and a rope attached to each end - me as the Mule! Pulling it about N-S and E-W will give you a smooth finish.

Seed - choose the grass seed depending on whether you want hard wearing (kids playing football) or smart looking (nice "regency stripes") - for Smart you will need a cylinder mower with roller, for Football you will probably want a rotary mower (you can get them with a rear roller too - which helps when cutting along the edge as mowers with 4 corner-wheels can easily slip over the edge and scalp the edge; the roller will give you fairly-smart stripes).

Get/Hire a seed / fertiliser dispenser. Put a fertiliser bag (or bin liner) down and run over it, precisely, say 10 times. Collect up the grass seed and weigh. From that you can work out how much your dispenser sows per square yard / meter for a single pass (if maths isn't your thing ask and I'll work out what the calculation is).

Sow the grass seed half in each direction (cross ways) which will help even out any bits between-the-rows and where you miss some. (Actually my dispenser won't do anything like half in one go, it takes about 4 passes, which is even better - offset each pass in the same direction a bit to average everything out, and make half the passes cross-ways. Two passes is fine though, if your dispenser outputs enough

Personally I would sow the grass seed in the Autumn; the weeds will not be active, so the grass will have less competition. Folk won't be wanting to walk on the lawn in the winter. The grass will be established by the Spring (might need a bit of watering in first year).

Spring sown (and you are running out of time already for this year - including 2 weeks for the weedkiller to work) will have to compete with the weed seed, and will shortly be draught stressed, so will need watering throughout the late spring and summer, and it isn't going to look good until next year anyway. But I have strong views on that ... lot of folk sow grass seed in the Spring and it turns out fine, I just wouldn't want the extra hassle.

If you have any money left from the barn conversion you could lay turf instead. That would get you going straight away, look smart on day 1, won't have any weeds in it, can be laid at any time, but will need watering through the first summer (but less than spring-sown seed I reckon)

 

Thanks for the rapid reply.

Turfing would be ideal but the quotes I've had have been astronomical!

Looking at the GSHP part again, and the grass needing to be good - I suspect it may be beyond redemption. I was thinking of planting a meadow grass/ flower mix on that part anyway, so may just kill the lot off and proceed as you suggested for the other part.

I've got access to a ride on rotavator and I've got a Toro ride on mower, so hopefully I can utilise both to take some of the back breaking work out of it!

I have some roundup ultra 3000 which apparently treats up to 3000m². Would there be any benefit to me doubling the dose?

Daniel

 

I presume your GSHP "rows" are close enough together that there will be hardly any real grass between them? Its a shame to rip up grass that is in good heart, because it takes some time to re-establish a lawn. But if, say, 30% of it is the area when there GSHP rows are them ripping the lot up makes sense. If its less than that I would consider repair - even if you have to Rotavate and sort out the "rows" and just re-seed them.

Grass seed isn't cheap ... albeit it is cheaper than turf.

"Would there be any benefit to me doubling the dose?"

No, just make sure you get good coverage (knapsack sprayer, or a smaller hand-held and more fill-ups!), apply with droplets rather than spray (which will drift even if there is barely any wind), and coat the grass / weed leaves well, but avoiding runoff (which is the point at which you've put too much on).

Assume you will need a second application in 2-3 weeks for the bits that you missed, or were not fully killed.

You might then want to run a flame thrower over the area to burn off the grass. Depends a bit on the size of the Rotavator; burning the dead grass / weeds off will be better than unclogging the Rotavator if the weeds get twined around it.

The weed killer will work best on new weed growth - so don't mow it short and then spray it! (but if you don't need to spray it just yet then mowing short, letting new growth spring up, then spraying will work well, and will give you less tangling of the Rotavator than if you spray existing tall-ish weeds - but you will then be into late Spring before you can sow, and that's getting rather late (unless you are planning for a sowing in the Autumn)

 

There is no benefit in doubling up ANY herbicide, the dose rate stated by the manufactures is the optimum if a higher dose was beneficial they would use this. With roundup doubling the dose decreases the efficiency.

If you have anything persistent then spray twice, once with a two week gap then spray again, leave a further two weeks before cultivating.