What Can I Do With My Lawn???

Morning Everyone,

When we first moved into our house the garden was a mixture of rotten decking, paving slabs and something that vaguely resembled grass! After falling through the decking one morning I decided enough was enough and set to work ripping the garden to shreds. Fast forward a few weeks and I had the ground ready (or so I thought) to lay turf. Our garden gets very damp in the winter and doesn't get a huge amount of sun so I bought turf that could supposedly handle this (it cost me an arm and a leg!) The turf took nice and quickly and proceeded to grow brilliantly all Summer long! Unfortunately as soon as Winter turned up the grass decided it had had enough and started dying. This probably wasn't helped by the cats deciding to start using it as a litter tray! The few days of nice weather recently has brought a few patches here and there back to life but a lot of it has died and the garden is looking quite boggy :( I want to get back out there ASAP to try and do something with it as we were hoping to have some BBQ's this year plus I would like my Daughter to be able to go out in the garden. When I was preparing the ground last time I found hundreds and hundreds of house bricks in the soil. I got as many up as I could but I'm sure there is still half a house under there! Will these be affecting the lawn and short of me digging up the whole garden to get them all is there any other way of sorting this? As everything was done in a rush last year I didn't really pay too much attention to levelling the soil and to be honest its really bumpy! How can I sort that out as well? Finally, I cant afford to buy turf again so what grass seed should I get with the aim to be sitting out there in the next couple of months?

Sorry for the essay but I just want to get the garden sorted!

I will get some pics up ASAP!

Cheers

Sammo

 

This is what the garden was like when we first moved in!

 

After a couple of days of clearing up.

 

All ready for some grass:

 

Turf laid:

 

This is what it looks like now

 

Hi Sammo and welcome to GC

I know this it's going to help very much but have you thought about artificial turf?
Looking at your position a lawn isn't going to grow very well with lots if shade and poor drainage.
Hope this helps

 

Hi,

Yeh we did consider that but the landlady didn't fancy the idea.

 

What does the landlady want ?, it is looking a 1000% better than when you moved in, has she contributed to anything.
Ask her what she would prefer, tell her you paid for turf already, and want somewhere tidy for your daughter to play in.
Try strimming down the long stuff and see what you have left.

 

She isn't too fussed about what we do with the garden but has expressed that she doesn't want fake grass. She is quite happy to contribute towards costly things (she paid for the shed), but we do get a substantial discount on our rent for doing general maintenance and tarting up of the house while we live there (works for us).

 

If the remaining bricks are deep down then they won't affect the grass. Grass roots only grow to four or five inches deep.

You can either persevere and try to retrieve what you have or start again. I'd be inclined to start again but if you use grass seed you will not have an established lawn until the end of this summer. If you want to clear everything that is there now you can kill it all with a glyphosate based spray like Round-Up but be careful not to let it drift onto plants you may want to keep. It will neutralise when it makes contact with soil, so when everything has died you can prepare the soil for seeding or turfing. Round-Up is classed as a systemic killer which means when it's sprayed on leaves it will work it's way down through the weed/plant and kill the roots.

Dig over the garden and then use a rake to break down the soil and level it. If you have clay soil it may be a good idea to dig sand or grit into it, that will help drainage. If it's really boggy then you'll have to consider putting in more extensive drainage. There are other threads in the 'Lawns' Forum that deal with this.

Once you have levelled the lawn shuffle across it and your feet will firm it down, then lightly rake it again to loosen the surface and fill in any dips or level mounds. Lay the grass seed and gently rake it in, it's best to stay off it until it's established, then water every day unless it rains but not to the point where you are washing the seed out. When the lawn is tall enough mow it on a high setting on your mower on the first two or three occasions, don't strim as that will tear the grass out. Mowing helps the grass to put out new shoots, like pruning a plant. It's better that you don't feed the lawn in it's first year as it may outgrow it's strength.

To keep a lawn in condition it must be mowed regularly throughout the growing season and any weeds that appear can be dealt with along the way.

 

I've had a garden which was mostly shade and even though I got the lawn to grow, it always had loads of moss in and was a nightmare to keep on top of it. Unless you are happy to do that then I would suggest paving it or else a mix of paving and gravel.