Replacing Lawn - advice requested

otron

We have an out-of-shape back garden, which is mostly crap and has very little actual grass. I'd like to bite the bullet and replace it completely but I'm unsure whether to do this myself or pay a pro.

Garden is ~200sqm and the ground is quite uneven. If I do it myself here's what I think are the steps:

1) Nuke the lot using roundup or similar (thinking of doing this soon)
2) Once everything is dead, hire a rotavator to turn up all the soil
3) Spend a hard days work getting it level (using pegs and string as a guide)
4) roll/flatten it
5) plant seed
6) water daily as required
7) profit

Am I missing anything important above? My guess was that if I spray it now, it'll be ready for the rotavating in 3-4 weeks, which mean planting in late April/Early May.

Advice, comments, or links to guides which are based on Irish climate, appreciated.

Alternatively, does anyone know what the going rate would be to pay someone to do this for me?

gosplan

otron wrote: »

We have an out-of-shape back garden, which is mostly crap and has very little actual grass. I'd like to bite the bullet and replace it completely but I'm unsure whether to do this myself or pay a pro.

Garden is ~200sqm and the ground is quite uneven. If I do it myself here's what I think are the steps:

1) Nuke the lot using roundup or similar (thinking of doing this soon)
2) Once everything is dead, hire a rotavator to turn up all the soil
3) Spend a hard days work getting it level (using pegs and string as a guide)
4) roll/flatten it
5) plant seed
6) water daily as required
7) profit

Am I missing anything important above? My guess was that if I spray it now, it'll be ready for the rotavating in 3-4 weeks, which mean planting in late April/Early May.

Advice, comments, or links to guides which are based on Irish climate, appreciated.

Alternatively, does anyone know what the going rate would be to pay someone to do this for me?

I was just about to post the same here.

That's pretty much the steps I've found but I'm totally new to this so we were probably looking at the same sites.

I'm doing it myself but I'm not looking at 200sqm either so it's not as big a job.

How do pegs and string work?

Sonnenblumen

otron wrote: »

We have an out-of-shape back garden, which is mostly crap and has very little actual grass. I'd like to bite the bullet and replace it completely but I'm unsure whether to do this myself or pay a pro.

Garden is ~200sqm and the ground is quite uneven. If I do it myself here's what I think are the steps:

1) Nuke the lot using roundup or similar (thinking of doing this soon)
2) Once everything is dead, hire a rotavator to turn up all the soil
3) Spend a hard days work getting it level (using pegs and string as a guide)
4) roll/flatten it
5) plant seed
6) water daily as required
7) profit

Am I missing anything important above? My guess was that if I spray it now, it'll be ready for the rotavating in 3-4 weeks, which mean planting in late April/Early May.

Advice, comments, or links to guides which are based on Irish climate, appreciated.

Alternatively, does anyone know what the going rate would be to pay someone to do this for me?

I'd suggest some amendments, but difficult to say exactly as there isn't too much info on current condition. Assuming the ground is well draining, I would advise disturbing the top surface as little as possible would be a better approach and involving less effort, less time and more cost effective. So:
1. spray area
2. remove top layer (max 50mm) after 2-3 weeks when all existing material is dead. Use a sod cutter not a rotovator.
3. leave stripped layer for 1 - 2 weeks and re-spray if necessary.
4. apply a topdressing of good quality top soil, rake and leave to settle for 7 days or 'heel in' by walking repeatedly walking the area or roll with garden roller. Topdressing will settle by at least 10 - 20% so you need to factor this in to establishing a good level (use pegs, string line or landscaping rake). Add good fertiliser to top layer finally rake repeatedly to achieve good level.
5. Seed area or much better option (costs a little more but better results are easier to achieve, manage and immediate) is to fit a roll turf lawn.
6. water regularly (daily during dry/warm spells).

BaronVon

Having done something similar in s much smaller front garden, and having pretty much made a balls of it, I would recommend getting someone in, if you can afford it. I found trying to level it the hardest part, and I used poor quality top soil, so while it was grand for the first 2-3 years, it's quite poor now, and will have to be re-done.

Meursault

Hi All,

I have a similar query to the one above. We live in the countryside. We had some four-legged visitors early on Christmas Day (not Santa's reindeer!), and they made an awful mess of the garden.

Given all the rain we've had during winter, the cows really dug up the garden. I spoke with the farmer and he has promised to sort it.

My query is what is the best approach to this? The garden is too big and there are too many holes to go around with some earth and sand and manually fill them in. It was suggested to me that some kind of steam roller might flatten out the holes, but I'm not sure.

Does this mean that the bets option would be to rotavate the whole garden again and replant with garden seed? I'm leaning towards this, because I can't see how there can be any other option. The garden was practically water-logged before the cows got near it at Christmas anyway, so some of these holes are half a foot deep. I cant imagine any roller fixing this.

Any advice would be great,

thanks

johnb25

Meursault wrote: »

Hi All,

I have a similar query to the one above. We live in the countryside. We had some four-legged visitors early on Christmas Day (not Santa's reindeer!), and they made an awful mess of the garden.

Given all the rain we've had during winter, the cows really dug up the garden. I spoke with the farmer and he has promised to sort it.

My query is what is the best approach to this? The garden is too big and there are too many holes to go around with some earth and sand and manually fill them in. It was suggested to me that some kind of steam roller might flatten out the holes, but I'm not sure.

Does this mean that the bets option would be to rotavate the whole garden again and replant with garden seed? I'm leaning towards this, because I can't see how there can be any other option. The garden was practically water-logged before the cows got near it at Christmas anyway, so some of these holes are half a foot deep. I cant imagine any roller fixing this.

Any advice would be great,

thanks

Don't try to roll it; it will compact the soil, and water logging will be even more of a problem.

Meursault

I didnt think of that actually.

I spoke to the farmer yesterday i think the only way forward is rotavating the whole garden and then re-seeding it.

i assume that means it will be autumn before we see grass again?

otron

ok so I had a pro out today from Greenfeet.ie and he figured the lawn is recoverable without the drastic measures mentioned above. So he gave me 2 options

1) Repair what's there - Scarify, reseed, treat weeds, live with the unevenness of the ground. [cost approx 500eur]

2) Strip off the top layer (as described by Sonnenblumen above), flatten and reseed from scratch [cost approx 1500eur]

Both options include the 4 visits over the course of the year to feed, kill weeds and do some maintenance.

Sonnenblumen

otron wrote: »

ok so I had a pro out today from Greenfeet.ie and he figured the lawn is recoverable without the drastic measures mentioned above. So he gave me 2 options

1) Repair what's there - Scarify, reseed, treat weeds, live with the unevenness of the ground. [cost approx 500eur]

2) Strip off the top layer (as described by Sonnenblumen above), flatten and reseed from scratch [cost approx 1500eur]

Both options include the 4 visits over the course of the year to feed, kill weeds and do some maintenance.

As a general rule it is not wise to apply any treatments to new grass during the first year and when you think about it, if you prep the area you shouldn't need anything like 4 follow-up visits? € 1500 seems very high, scratch and prep (incl spray + ferts) € 400.00, seed € 450.00 . In comparison, scratch and roll out turf € 1800.00.

otron

Thanks for the perspective - sounds like I need to get a few more quotes!

ROY RACE

Just planted a new lawn with seeds ****in birds all over the place eating and ****ting the seed you need some net to cover the seed or else its a waste of time even better if you have a cat

Happy_Harry

I also have an area of 200sqm that is in need of more TLC. It is just this back garden lawn. It is sloped slightly so one part is always dry with very little grass and very hard.. Then there is a lot of wild grass and now this year I got moss where I had (dead) grass last year before I scarified it. I don't know how many times I put seeds down last year to cover the bare patches, but it simply never grew.

The front lawns are doing alright after a lot of TLC last year.

The issue with me is clearly the topsoil. 2 weeks ago I decided I had enough of it and would scrape off and buy new top soil and start again. But once I started looking at the cost of it, because no way I was going to do this myself, it would probably indeed turn out to be somewhere near €1000 (Incl the digger and driver, taking away the soil, new soil, yer man to actually put the new lawn back together).

So I gave it a good cut and you know what, from a 5 m distance it doesn't look all that bad. I will continue this year with feeding and re-seeding and see what happens.

I am not sure whether to kill the moss and scarify or not. At least it is green and soft to walk on as opposed to the bare patches I had last year.. Talking to friends and colleagues, they all look at me as if I am crazy, when I say that. Moss apparently needs to be exterminated. Am I crazy indeed ?

chainsawpaddy

Hi. Sorry to recover this old thread, but looking for some advise about my lawn.

House build and lawn done in 2017. But the lawn was never great and dries out quite easily in dry weather. Did a few test holes the weekend gone and can see the builder put between 6 to 8 inches of topsoil over the stone/rubble throughout the lawn. From planting trees over the years I have pulled all kinds of crap out of the ground when digging holes (blocks, plastics, pockets of sand, etc.)

All different types of grasses growing (forgive my lack of knowledge), clover everywhere and weeds a plenty.

My question, can I make a decent lawn with 6 to 8 inches of soil over 804 / stone? Feeding, scariffing, reseeding, etc.

If not, am I looking at having to strip back the topsoil to get the rubble out, or could I get away with killing off the top layer and putting another 2 inches of decent topsoil on the existing lawn?

Thanks.