Guidance on plan for 700m2 garden

loveisdivine

Hi,

I had a thread a while back about how to tackle our newly acquired overgrown garden.

I go some helpful replies and we've started to tackle it but would just like some guidance on the next few steps.

Over the weekend we hired a large petrol scythe called a mowbar and basically cut down all the overgrown weeds, brambles etc.

We have about 80% of it clear now. Most of the brambles are cut down to about 2 inch above ground. We are still clearing a lot of what was cut down as there is just a huge volume of it so hope to have it all clear by next weekend.

I believe I need to put down a weed killer such as SBK brushwood weed killer. But I don't think I can do that til around May.

The ground is also quite uneven, with 3 or 4 large mounds that need to be flattened. What's the best way to go about doing this?

Once I've flattened the ground and put down the weed killer, what's the next step? We don't want to end up with a perfectly manicured lawn or anything, we'd like plenty of flower beds, maybe some wildflowers too. We want it to be practical for wildlife, not to just look nice.

I assume I need to leave time for the weed killer to work and then also for it to no longer be effective before I can plant anything in the ground or sow any grass seeds?

It it safe to rotivate after the majority of the brambles/weeds are dead? Then perhaps a ground barrier and new top soil?

Sorry there's so many questions, just want to make sure I don't miss any important steps, or do something that;s going to set it all back.

loveisdivine

Thought I'd add a picture of how it currently looks after we've cleared a lot of it.



The 2 mounds in the forefront are the ones we need to flatten. That pile at the back is just some of the waste we collected.

magicbastarder

could you make features of the mounds? are they actually mounds of soil, or possibly spoil heaps of some other material?

loveisdivine

They seem to be all soil and they are pretty solid too. There were 2 other large overgrown patches which were full of burnt out mattress's, old fence, old tools, beer cans, lots of huge branches etc! I curse the previous owners! Whenever they did bother cutting the hedges/trees they seem to have just dumped the cuttings wherever they happened to be standing at the time. It's been really hard work.

When we found the first mound we actually thought it would be cool to make it into a sort of hobbit house feature Not sure what else we could do with them. But if we can make them look the part then they don't need to be flattened. Just don't want it to look too messy either.

looksee

You cannot be sure that one application of weedkiller will completely remove brambles. However with all the hedgerow around the area they will probably grow back in again anyway. Unless you are willing to make the soil sterile (ie poison it) you cannot put weedkiller down until there are some weeds growing to kill; they take up the weedkiller though new leaf growth.

I would suggest getting a digger in to turn over the soil so you can clear out briar roots etc - you will still probably need to apply weedkiller but it would be a quicker way of getting rid of roots and making the soil friable enough to manage - you would probably not get a fork into any of that even with the weeds killed off.

loveisdivine

So if we got the digger, I'd need to basically just dig up all the roots and pick them out, then apply the weed killer ( as many times as needed) to the over turned soil? Then just keep spot weeding until it's relatively clear?

I'd like to mark off the areas that we want to use as beds and then sow grass seed in the rest of the space, at what point could I sow the grass seed? After it's been relatively weed free for a while and then had new top soil over it?

Edit - I don't mind the edges/hedging looking a bit rough, we can probably keep on top of the brambles that do crop up along the boundaries, just don't want them popping up in the middle

looksee

A digger with someone who knew what he was doing would be able to separate out the bigger roots and you could go over it and pull out smaller ones.

You do not apply weedkiller to soil, you apply it to growing vegetation. You can really only hope to completely clear the heavy duty weeds, some more will always come but you deal with them by mowing if its a lawn. I would be inclined to see this as a 12 month job, spend this year clearing it and weedkilling new brambles as they show through, and sow a lawn next year in about April/May. If there are a lot of brambles you will be damned with them for ever if you do not get them out. Mowing will stop them coming in the lawn, but it will not stop them travelling to the flowerbeds.

loveisdivine

We can't really afford to pay people, that's why we've been doing it ourselves. I did get a quote to level it all off, remove everything and basically get it back to basic and they wanted €2700. That could well be reasonable but we have nowhere near that money!

mortimer33

Reminds me of when I bought my house - I tried both weedkiller and weed suppressant sheets however I found grass is the best way to keep weeds at bay. If it was me - I would hire a rotivator in March and plant grass seed in early April.

looksee

In that case I suggest you leave it till the brambles start to grow - actual leaves not just buds - then spray. Leave it about 3 weeks to a month and see if they are dying and if any new growth is coming (they tend to look healthier just after they have been sprayed, so don't panic), spray again, wait again. It would be good to get out established scutch, dandelions, thistles, docks and gorse roots as well, and rushes if there are any. Other smaller/softer weeds are not an issue. Even if you are going to put new top soil down you need to rough dig and remove roots from the area as you will just create a non-draining layer under the new soil.

loveisdivine

Thanks so much for all this advice. We really want to do as much as we can ourselves and learn as we go, but obviously when you've not done much before it can be hard to know how to proceed.

Would a digger or a rotivator be better? Would a rotivator make it harder to remove the roots cos it would chop them up?

And should I rotivate/dig before or after we've done the weed killer a few times?

loveisdivine

I have another quick question on a separate issue. A different part of the garden has trees/hedging along the edge, but the previous owner had dumped lots of hedge and tree cuttings along the bottom of them. We removed all this dead stuff but now it's left us with huge gaps about 1 metre high along the hedging from the ground up. I think nothing could grow because of all the dead stuff dumped there.

I was thinking of putting up some sort of cheap screening so we can't see straight into the neighbours garden and to stop our chickens just popping through. But now I'm wondering if I were to plant something like Hornbeam hedging directly in front of these trees to block off the openings at the bottom, would that be ok? I'm not sure how high the hedging would grow?