[oliveoil54]

:cherry:  Hi
Have approx half an acre of land with approx one third laid to very badly drained wet lawn. We recently had new land drains installed which completely destroyed our large lawn, which although now very dry ie brick hard, resembles the moon's landscape, but there is some grass and lots of weeds growing.

Our quandary is - we have the offer from a neighbouring farmer who will rotivate the main easily accessibly section of the lawn with his small tractor and field rotivator, but we will have to do quite a large part of the rest by hand. But do we allow him to do this? Or will the rotivator just chop up all our weeds and make lots more.

When is a good time to do this? As due to the large size we intend to reseed - as turf will be too expensive.

Do we spread suitably strong weedkiller down now before rotivation (bearing in mind ground is very hard due to dry weather), or after rotivation, and then rotivate it again later.

I am a wee bit dubious about using weedkiller/glyphosate, as we live on the edge of a forest and have lots of wildlife including various birds, red squirrels, deer, pheasants & hares, which regularly use the garden; also we have mature established borders all round the lawn and am concerned as to whether the weedkiller would leach into the beds and kill established shrubs & trees etc. Can anyone suggest something which would work in the same way but not be so toxic to the wildlife and surrounding garden.

I understand the best time to lay a seeded lawn is September to early October, so need to make some decisions as to how we are going to proceed fairly soon.

We also intend to build a raised veg patch probably 2 railway sleepers high at the bottom of the newly drained lawn area. We will be putting in more top soil and compost etc, but my "better" half also thinks we need to dig over the area below, as it has quite a bit of stone, weed and rubbish buried by previous owners over the years (we actually found a cast iron fire place under one area we dug over recently!) and remove all the rubbish and as much weed as possible by hand, which has been turned up by the digger digging the field drains. I think its just making more back breaking work thats not really necessary especially as we intend to add lots more soil on the top.

Any advice will be extremely welcome.

Many thanks in advance from one very novice gardener with back ache!

[poultrygeist]

Hi Olive,

I haven't got the foggiest idea what your best course of action is, but I thought you deserve at least one answer after such a long post !  

Whereabouts are you ? You say you have red squirells, so somewhere Northwest or North of the border I presume ?
Unless they're striking out from their strongholds at last.

It sounds like you have a real task, whichever route you take and may be better broken down into smaller jobs over the next couple of years if you can wait that long.

And the perennial question. Have you got any photos you can post ?  

Rob

[poultrygeist]

...and welcome to the madhouse !!  

I almost didn't spot your join date  

Rob

[Trillium]

I went through something similar on the lower half of my front lawn when a new drilled well had to be done. They left a heck of a mess, and the fellow who filled in the trenches didn't bother to save the topsoil, just buried it and left rocks and clay on top.
It'll be an all summer project for you. The kindly farmer's rotovator will definitely chop and greatly multiply weed roots for you, so you're best off to start digging them up by spade. In my case, a pickaxe was my best friend at loosening the heavy, rock-laden soil. Get close enough to the roots so you can loosen soil by hand to get those long deep roots out fully, along with any 'garbage' you don't want. After rainstorms is a good time to work when the soil is softer.
Re the veg beds, 2 railway ties high might not give enough root depth for some crops you'd want to grow, so yes, it's a good idea to loosen the bottom of potential beds, pull out any weed roots (good time to see if mares tail is with you), rocks, etc. then loosen well with a garden fork before making the beds. Its a lot of work now but you'll be happier in the long run for it. Took me the whole summer to sort my front yard. Took away trailer loads of rocks, weeds and general garbage. By fall I was able to rotovate in lots of manure, peat (we have lots here), shredded leaves and compost. Instead of grass, I put a flower garden in that spot and believe me, the plants are thriving for all my work.

[oliveoil54]

Hi
Thanks for your posts have uploaded some pics if you are interested.
Dont know if the pics give an idea of the size but the whole plot is well over half an acre, I would think the lawn is nearly a third of an acre, which would be a lot of work to do by hand.

We 1st intend to try & remove as many of the leylandi (after the birds have finished nesting) as poss without removing the stumps as it will cause too much damage to the plants already established.

The next job is to dig out the entire lawn area then rotivate.

(Can anyone suggest any weedkiller at all that isnt harmful to the wildlife?)

Relay the lawn to the part of the garden nearest the cottage and then eventually establish a veg patch at the bottom prob that will prob have to be next year.

[Trillium]

Glyphospates like Roundup should do the trick if you apply it later in the evening. It'll dry quickly and few animals would be wandering around and almost no birds. Within an hour or 2, it'll be safe to walk on, and by morning the birds can still search for bugs and whatever.

[noshed]

I think glyphosate is the best you're going to get but still wear gloves etc when applying

[oliveoil54]

Is it worth buying a large spray gun/container as we have such a large area to cover. Where is the best place to buy this sort of weedkiller, and what sort of quantity do I need and do we spray once or more?

Also will it penetrate given that our ground is at present rock hard.

Should we sparay now?
Or rotivate then spray?
Or wait till the ground has softened after a bit of rain then spray?

We also get bats is it likely to affect them?

[Yorkie]

Glyphosate doesn't work by penetrating the ground.  Instead, it works by being absorbed through the leaves of an actively growing plant, and being taken down through the plant's system to its roots (which is why it's called systemic).  

You don't need rain before applying it - in fact, the leaves should be dry or it will run off.  If it rains within about 6-8 hours of application you will need to re-do it.

It can take a few weeks for the weedkiller to work its way through the plant.  For more stubborn plants (e.g. docks, dandelions) you may need a repeat application.

Do not rotavate first, or before you see signs that the plants are dying - you'll simply chop up the weeds into lots of little pieces, each of which will happily form a separate plant!

The best-known brand containing glyphosate is called round-up, but it's expensive.  I'd suggest that you look at somewhere like B&Q for an unbranded neat glyphosate and get that instead.  You can tell its strength by looking on the back for the active ingredient %.

The packaging will tell you the volume of the glyph inside, the dilution rate, and generally how much area the packet will treat.

As for its application, yes get a backpack sprayer or similar.  I have a 3 litre one, but a 5 litre one may be better if you have a substantial area to cover.

As long as you're not spraying it directly onto the bats, my guess is that you'd be ok - unless someone else knows more about bats than I do.  The main thing to remember with this stuff is not to allow it to enter a watercourse / pond; it's lethal to fish.