Garden Clearance - suggestions please?

harlem

Hi there,

we just got the keys to our new house last week and I need advice on where to start in taming the garden!
The garden is approx. 1 acre and full of jumbo size weeds.
I did about an hour in the garden with an industrial weedeater and cleared a good bit, but we want to have nice flat lawns and from what I've cleared the land appears to be quite rocky in places.

We've thought over a few options of what to do but would appreciate advice from others on what would be the quickest/easiest option!

I plan to use the weedeater all day tommorrow (weather providing!) to level all the weeds, but beyond that we were looking at one of the following;

Hire a mini digger or 360 excavator to turn/level garden out
Use a grass killing chemical like gromoxin to kill all remaining grass
Hire local farmer to plough garden

One of the above options then when land is cleared completely reseed lawn

Or...once i've cut all the current jungle back, remove the rocks we can see on the surface and scatter lawn seed on top of existing lawn

I'm not too keen on using a massive amount of chemicals so the gromoxin options probably out, has anyone done the same or have any advice on what to do/not to do?

Thanks in advance

10-10-20

Local farmer is the best option - a friend did this recently and paid the guy €150 for the work which went well as the farmer helped pull rocks and lift trunks etc... Consider getting the farmer to use a rake after ploughing to collect up the rocks also!

harlem

Thanks for the reply, god that was a bargain $150 for the day, I was thinking of offering about $300 or so but wasn't really sure what the 'going rate' would be and didn't want to go offending any farmers!
I'll definitely go down that route to get it cleared, just need to try work up the motivation now to do the work

Minder

http://www.gardenplansireland.com/forum/about1213.html

This link was posted by IrishGardener on this thread

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055234969

might be of some use to you.

ttm

With the good weather we have been having it might not be too early to spray with Roundup or one of the other cheaper glyphsphosate based weed killers. Invest in a knapsack spayer. Even if you have nealry cleaned the land you can still spot weed any perenial weeds that regrow.

Best not to use Gramoxon as it will only burn off the green top growth and leave the roots to grow again - you probably shouldn't have it in the first place as its only for commercial use, even if many farmers co-ops will sell you 5 litres off the shelf. OK so you shouldn't be able to buy 5 litres of Roundup for home use either but at least it won't kill you ;-)

harlem

Thanks again for the replies
I got 5 litres of roundup & a knapsack sprayer & I swear I'm convinced I've jinxed the weather!
As soon as I bought it its started raining so I can't use it yet!

We've to hire an excavator to move mounds of rubble left in the garden from the builders so we're going to get rid of some of the weeds that way, then i think maybe get a turf cutter so remove the top soil then blitz the place with roundup.
So hopefully I might have a garden some time this year instead of the jungle I have at the mo :rolleyes:

2 stroke

Its too early in year to spray. Cut your jungle back then let this years weeds germinate then spray with roundup. Spraying now is just pumping out chemical for no good reason.

niceirishfella

10-10-20 wrote: »

Local farmer is the best option - a friend did this recently and paid the guy €150 for the work which went well as the farmer helped pull rocks and lift trunks etc... Consider getting the farmer to use a rake after ploughing to collect up the rocks also!

+1

Hot Tip - local famer is good, but ask a local AGRI CONTRACTOR to plough it, and then run a POWER LEVELER over it, a serious piece of kit. This will level the goound after the sod is turned and will break up the sod in good style. Then pick all the stones, then level again, and sow.

harlem

niceirishfella wrote: »

+1

Hot Tip - local famer is good, but ask a local AGRI CONTRACTOR to plough it, and then run a POWER LEVELER over it, a serious piece of kit. This will level the goound after the sod is turned and will break up the sod in good style. Then pick all the stones, then level again, and sow.

Thanks a mill for the brill advice I'm definitely going to look into that asap, anything that makes life easier!!

Good advice 2 Stroke also, I know I'm way too impatient wanting to start spraying this early, I'm going to hold off on the spraying for a few weeks yet.

Roll on the summer so I can get the jungle tamed!

sculptor

An acre of lawn is a lot of grass to cut,
Why do you need to 'tame the jungle' why not set up a wildlife habitat?
A quarter acre of lawn and three quarters to mother nature.
I have to cut acres of thistles every year and leave some in the corners for the red admirals even though I know that these corners will spread into the field making my work never ending. Maybe that's what I like, working with the natural environment not trying to defeat it.

harlem

sculptor wrote: »

An acre of lawn is a lot of grass to cut,
Why do you need to 'tame the jungle' why not set up a wildlife habitat?
A quarter acre of lawn and three quarters to mother nature.
I have to cut acres of thistles every year and leave some in the corners for the red admirals even though I know that these corners will spread into the field making my work never ending. Maybe that's what I like, working with the natural environment not trying to defeat it.

Excellent suggestion, especially as I'm not a fan of mowing the lawn

We'd planned to plant a large section of the garden with a mixture of tree's to create a small woodland & hedging to encourage wildlife in the garden.
But we do still need to clear it initially as there's a lot of builders rubble/rubbish on the land and its extremely rocky - we want to clear it back and start again with a clear canvas...or at least thats the plan!:pac::pac:
When our house was being built, it looks like they dug the foundations of the house out and piled it as well as any debris/junk from the original property at the back of the garden in a big hill as well as any rubbish left over from building our house such as tiles/concrete etc so it needs to go.


We're hiring a 4ton excavator this weekend to get started on the basics, should be interesting to see what else we find in the garden as our preliminary clear up found either a mini/morris minor chassis & a variety of rusty panels for same and a few lovely granite posts, bit of a lucky dip!