Update July 2021
Spring 2020.
My “New Lawn” project and the mistake(s) I made.
I had a very nice looking wooden deck (designed and built by my wife & I) that covered a previously grassed area and concrete paving slabs. It left us a grassed area that we called the lawn. The deck sub frame was now rotting so we decided to rip up the wood decking and go back to having a bigger lawn and re-use the concrete flag patio! The “lawn / grassed area” was in poor condition and needed leveling. The soil was heavy and moss was a problem due to water logging. So the idea was to create a “new (extended) lawn” that we could be proud of! We also wanted to include a “Wild Flower Garden” which would be Bee and Butterfly friendly and a “meadow” that consisted of low growing plants that could be walked on and would produce a nice fragrance. We also wanted to have a wider concrete path to accommodate our “overgrown” shrubbery. so we purchased plastic “Grass Grids” and will have grass growing through these and have the benefit of a wider path.
I considered hiring a turf lifter and re turfing but I haven’t anywhere to store the (old) turves and the “lawn area” needed some serious leveling to remove bumps and hollows. So I decided to kill of the grass and then then seed it.
I used a systemic weed killer (glyphosate) to kill off the the grass and it did work after about 10 days (Mistake 1). The grass and roots were indeed “dead” but the roots still formed a “sod”. The soil that was covered by the deck hadn’t seen any light for some 12 years and was completely free of any vegetation and “sods”, it was in principle, “barren” soil in need of some compost but easy to work.
I hired a heavy duty rotavator with “driven wheels” to turn over the grassed area to break up the root sod to allow raking and leveling (mistake 2). The rotavator did indeed break up the root sod but not enough to make the soil workable. The area where the deck had been installed was completely grass and sod free and the rotavator did a good job. The hired (petrol engine) rotavator was very heavy and not at all easy to use. It didn’t do the job I thought it would do on the grassed area. I purchased a lightweight electric “Tiller” but this only really threw the sods about and didn’t do much to break them down. I could see that where the ground was free of sods, it will do a brilliant job of working in the manure / organic matter.
Project now ground (no pun intended) to a halt. (July 2020)
The rotavator didn’t do the job I was expecting it do. The hire shop(s) had nothing different and the new electric tiller didn’t break down the root sod 🙁 I’m not as young as I was and have a dodgy back and dodgy knees. Everything seems to take 10 times longer to do so I had to find a way to finish the project without killing myself. I could have dug a few trenches and buried the sods but that would be hard physical work.
After much thought, I decided to revert to the “black plastic” idea and let nature take its course! I’ll keep the black plastic in place until all the “root sods” have “broken down” enough to allow me to rake and level, with no “sod or roots” to get in the way. I’ll then introduce some manure / organic matter to break down the heavy soil. The project will take longer than I had hoped and may go over to spring of next year before I get to putting grass seed on to the “new lawn”.
With hindsight, I would have been better off not using the (expensive) systemic weedkiller and just used the “black plastic”. Patience is a virtue but at my stage of the life cycle, time is an expensive commodity 🙂
March / April 2021.
Covering the troublesome “lawn area” with black plastic has done a good job, the “root clods” have broken down and this has allowed us to progress with the new lawn from seed. The electric tiller was now able to do a good job of breaking up the soil. We decided to “install” plastic edging for the new lawn area and found that we needed to add more soil to level things up. We also wanted a small area of “Meadow”, which would have low growing plants like “Thymus” and “Chamomile”. In addition we also wanted a “Wild Garden” area with bee friendly plants.
We knew that the “new lawn” area was very heavy (Clay) soil so we decided to add sharp sand instead of topsoil along with organic compost. The tiller worked like a charm combining it all. The “new lawn” has now been raked, leveled and has been “firmed” using a roller and the “penguin walk”. Grass seed has been applied and plastic netting has been installed to keep the birds of. We’ve scattered seeds (thymus and chamomile) on the meadow and wild garden areas. We now wait for the seeds to do their stuff.
We had a bonus!
The sharp sand we ordered (2 x jumbo bags) turned out to be (Recycled Glass Sand) and it contains bits of glass of many colours. We had intended using the sharp sand to help break down the clay and to create an ornamental path with (our existing flag stones as stepping stones) and then topping off with “decorative gravel” but the “recycled glass sand” is so beautiful; we decided to not bother with the “decorative gravel”. The ornamental path with “stepping stones” looks great with “recycled glass sand” and when we have plants like (forget me nots, thymus and chamomile) growing in the “ornamental path”, it should look great.
The “plastic grids” seem to be doing a good job of “widening” the curly concrete path and should allow us to walk on the grids without harming the grass – when it grows!
July 2021.
The new lawn and wild garden is now flourishing, the effort has been worthwhile.
