Landscaping /Gardening

[Strungout]

Hi,

This is probably the wrong place to post this,but you guys seem to be able to solve most of my dramas so here goes.

I am going to landscape the yard .At the moment I have a lot of weed and rubbish in the "garden" and "lawn."

Am I better to scrape off about 100 mm of the top and bring in some good soil or should I just get a rotary hoe and churn it al up.The existing soil on the top is average.

Most of the lawn is going and it will end up as gardens.
TIA

Greg

[Bodgy]

If you don't mind the cost, you're much better scraping off the existing top soil and replacing it. Your existing soil is probably full of waiting-to-germinate weeds, seeds, bugs etc., and, by the sound of it, of poor quality. If you put good, nurient rich soil on top, and start to look after the yard, then all these undesirables will shoot up. You'll never be rid of them. Have you met Onion Weed?

You also make no comment about the levels. I assume you're keeping the same level, so you can't just dump new soil on top.

A mate of mine went thru this process, whilst I just struggle to get by with the old, poor and dirty topsoil. His garden looks like something out of a magazine, whilst mine just looks sad and tired.

I'd take off 150mm.

Be prepared to pay, unless you're going to do the work yourself. Nobody seems to labour anymore, they just turn up with some weirdo skid steer device that looks like a moon buggy, which scrapes the soil off and levels the new stuff.

Then you got the little additions, like 1/2 hour to change wheels so it can get thru the gate, 1/2 hour to take scraper blade off, exchange with bucket, then vice versa, then wheels off and on and on we go. Unfortunately it was an hourly rate.

There's a lesson here somewhere.

[bitingmidge]

Definitely bring in as much "proper" soil as you can.

In the meantime, get an expert (landscape architect or horticulturist) to give you some advice on conditioning the soil you have. It may be that it needs only the addtion of some organic material to make it right.

You will need more than 100 mm though, particularly if you are planting shrubs and trees.

You are going to have weeds anyway, so don't be put off, make sure that you use heaps of mulch immediately after finishing the garden levels.

Like most things, a few dollars spent establishing the garden properly will pay off for years.

Looks like a good candidate for before and after photos!


Cheers,

P

[Dan_574]

I would leave everything where it is and just rotary hoe it, add lots of horse **** and organic material to build up the soil, lay down weed mat and 100-150mm mulch on top and the weeds wont come through. don Bourke always says the best dirt you can have is whats already there just add organic matter.

Unless you have lots of dollars getting an excavator, bobcat and truck in will cost you at least a grand a day, depending on how much you have to do it could cost alot then you have to buy your soil and the stuff you get from most landscape supplies is crap, too sandy and all they do is add mushroom compost and manure to topsoil what you would be doing anyway. If its clay add gypsum. Save your dollars and leave it where it is, I say.

[corbs]

I would rotary hoe the lot and round up at the same time, water regularly to germinate the dormant weeds then in a couple of weeks round up again. Shouldnt be much left after that, if you leave it too long and the weeds seed, then the process gets a lot longer.

Corbs

[namtrak]

In a perfect world do something like this.

Spray the lot with Round Up (as per the instructions). Or some other glysophate.

Wait two weeks

Spray the lot again with Round Up.

Wait two weeks

Scrape off the top 100 mm or so, if the soil is poor.

Rotary hoe the remainder and mix in conditioners such as gypsum.

Wait two weeks and then apply Round Up

Wait two weeks

Reapply good quality top soil

Level, compact and scrape.

Place in sprinkler system.

Layer with beetle killers!!

Water soil

Lay turf

Roll

Water the crap out of it for about 4 weeks.

More or less.!!!!

Having said all of that though, at the end of the day 90 percent of the cases I come across where people say their lawn needs replacing, merely needs some tender love and care.

I bit of aerating, some spraying for clover and broadleafs, some fertilsers and some oversowing of seed does wonders!!!

Cheers

[Cliff Rogers]

Go the chemicals Namtrak, how's ya liver look'n?

If what you have is growing stuff, that's a start.... bury it in mulch, thick mulch.
Plant your new plants through a hole in the mulch.

Water it & watch.

[Trav]

I agree with Dan. Unless you are made of money (and I can think of much better things to spend it on), just hire a rotary hoe and work in a whole stack of organic matter, compost etc. Scraping off will cost you a fortune - plus you will need to get rid of the fill. Just work it in and things will be sweet.

You will have to be extra vigilant about weeding in the first few months though.

Trav

[namtrak]

Go the chemicals Namtrak, how's ya liver look'n?

If what you have is growing stuff, that's a start.... bury it in mulch, thick mulch.
Plant your new plants through a hole in the mulch.

Water it & watch.

Yeh I know, however a lot of composts aren't much better. Pick up manure from the local trotting track? The Dept of Health wont allow vegies grown in manure from racehorses to be sold locally. And living up North you'd know the pitfalls from wallowing around in cow manure, I had a bout of lepto once and it isn't pretty.

The problem is, that most of the gardens I do, and the reason I am doing them are for people who dont have the time to tend their garden. So, given that all the mulching in the world wont stop weeds coming through and generally I steer away from matting, the simplest and most effective option is to spray with a herbicide. Always take the safety precautions, always follow the instructions and try and stick with stuff which leaves no residual.

Cheers

[Bodgy]

A word of warning about weed mat. I was a strong proponent of this, and used it extensivley. Have since ripped it all up and mulched. Problem is that the matting is almost completely impermiable to water, hence (particularly in the Sydney drought) your plants will die of thirst.

Yeah, people will argue but even tho the stuff looks full of holes, the water won't penetrate, at least not enough. This is not a theory, it is factual as evidenced by my pulling the mat out, after a day of rain, and finding bone dry soil below. Maybe if the area is totally flat, the water would lie and then penetrate. In my yard, it all slopes, hence the water just drains away off the mat.

[womble]

speaking as someone who spent ten years as a gardener mowing lawns, whipper-snipping, poisoning, fertilising etc......just concrete the lot.

no more mowing, weeding, poisoning etc

lawns are over-rated. And I hate them. And mowing.
But if you MUST have one you could spray weednfeed, aerate the ground and put some top-dressing on for a start. The rotary hoe method would work too, builds your arm muscles as a side benefit.