Newbie gardener - where to start??

KBarry

I've just moved into a rented house with a bit of a garden out the back, and a small lawn and drive out the front. It's basically ok but the last tenants let the grass get a bit long (ie, knee high). How do I go about getting a nice lawn first of all, and eventually a bit of colour (flowerbed? pots?)

Bear in mind:
a) Before today I had never used a lawnmower in my life. What I expected to be an easy hour's work took me 4 hours and a sore back.
b) I'm quite lazy, erm, I mean I have a busy schedule.

The back had some really big weeds. I pulled them up but the roots were quite thick. Am I going to have to dig them out? Also, how do you do the edges up against the fence? I did my best with the mower, but it's impossible to get right up against it.

tampopo

I was going to say, get a strimmer (somehow) and strim the grass till it's short enough to cut with a lawnmower. Then keep it to a manageable height, i.e. short.

The bits at the edge, well you've got to cut them with a shears, and keep them short and then you'll be fine.

As for the weeds, it depends what type of weeds they were. Shake any excess soil off and bin the rest. It they are something like Dock, or dandelion they will return, but a spot treatment (spraying with a nozzle from a bottle) with something like Roundup or Tumbleweed will kill them in a couple of weeks. (takes a couple of weeks to work its way down through the foliage to the roots and kill it off).

The most important thing is that once the grass is at a manageable height, it's er, manageable. Probably the hardest bit is done now, you'll be grand. You're just coming in to the slowing of the grass growing season. One more cut in September and maybe another in October if there's a dry spell and that should do you till next year, though Waterways Ireland cut the grass on the canal bank near here on Dec 7th one year so who knows.

get a shears if you haven't already.

10-10-20

To get the grass to recover from a situation where it's really long, you've got to start trimming it frequently, so set out to do it at least weekly. If you keep this up for a month or two it will thicken out and improve. We'll be into winter then and it will stop growing.
Good luck with it!

looksee

To get a bit of colour into your garden you need to dig out a small bed. It depends on the size and shape of your garden how big and where this will be, but look for a spot that gets a reasonable amount of sun and preferably is close to where you would normally go - not down at the far end where you will forget about it or not want to go when the grass is wet. Roughly 20 square feet would be good (though 3ft x 6 foot rectangle will probably look like a grave!)

Take off the grass sod (you will need to buy a spade, get a medium sized one, the big ones can be heavy to handle even empty) and either stack it somewhere where it can be the start of a compost heap, or save it (have a bit of polythene handy), dig out the soil from the bed and bury the sods deep. This is hard work so I would go the way of the compost heap! Get a bag of something like Brown Gold or compost and dig it into the soil, make sure it gets well mixed in.

Buy a big bag of daffodil bulbs - any supermarket or garden centre, but make sure they have a good turnover, bulbs soon sprout in a warm supermarket - and one or two (max) interesting small shrubs. Put in the shrubs, water well. Plant the daffodils all over the rest of the area. For instant colour put in a couple of trays of winter pansies, and to cut down on weeding cover all bare soil with wood chips. Keep an eye on it over the winter and enjoy seeing the daffs come up. Pinch off the pansy flowers as they die. Water the shrubs and pansies if the weather stays dry. You would need to be getting the bulbs in over the next month.

A spade will cost you €20 up. Bag of compost/brown gold around 5 -10 euros depending what you get. Bag of bulbs around 10 - 12 euros. Shrubs - almost anything from about €8 up, a couple of small Hebes (neat little evergreen shrubs with purple or white flowers) would be quite cheap. Couple of trays of pansies, about €5 each.