Planting seeds over tarpaulin

Hello everyone

I am a new member, recently joined to share what I had started doing on my mum's garden during lockdown. See more here Helping restore Ma's garden

I am preparing the ground to plant seeds and hit a roadblock.

I found tarpaulin all over the garden with between 2cm to 4cm soil on top. I was advised to remove this before planting seeds. However despite using rotavator, the job would still require manual labour to shovel the soil off the tarp before it can be lifted off else it's too heavy. The area is 14x6m and previously had the coarse grass that grows on its own which i removed. That itself was a big job as there were roots everywhere.

I have 10kg of bone meal and 4 tonns of topsoil on the way. If can create a depth of 6cm of soil on top of the tarp, would that be sufficient for lawn seed to grow?

Another question, how can i re-use the grass I've removed (inclusive of roots) ? It's currently drying out in the sun.

 

Doesn't sound ideal to me, its better if you got rid of it.
It could cause water logging in winter and dead grass in summer.

Cant see the point of the 4 ton of top soil.

 

The coarse grass I would either let it dry out completely and burn it, or put it in a container fill with water and leave to rot. It tends to survive domestic compost heaps.
As Pete said remove the tarpaulin if at all possible, it's not like proper woven weed suppression membrane which is porous.

 

Hello Jack and welcome.

Forgive me please, but I have read and re-read your post. Please can you tell us more about what you hope to achieve.

So you have begun cultivation of mum's garden. Using a cultivator that, what disturbs the top nine inches of soil.. Hardly enough to have any lasting benefit. Nevertheless, you now find some kind of material barrier. As a proffessional, any kind of artificial barrier, to me is a, NO GO.

To begin with clearing and cleansing the area. I would personally resort to spade digging. This will give you some 10-12 inches of depth. Whatever roots you come across, get rid of. Don't compost, best to dry and burn.

Now you say you have X amount of top soil on it's way. Sorry to say. This is totally invalidating what you have already done. Here you are introducing foreign soil. Top soil is just that it. Imagine going out with wheelbarow and rake, and raking up the soil and then dumping it on your plot. Then you mention a load of Bone meal. Why???????????? What for.? Please reply. I so much want to help you and others.

 

Hi Mike,

The topsoil I ordered is screened to 10mm and is blended with compost. See the analysis here https://londontopsoilcompany.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/LONDON-TOPSOIL-GP10-11-05-17-.pdf and product page here London Blended Compost Topsoil Mix Bulk Bag - London Topsoil Company

I thought it would provide a healthy soil composition given the soil at my mum's garden appears to be of poor quality (dry, sandy).

In regards to the bone meal, this was something I picked up from a video on youtube
The advice was from a gentleman named Tom Cole, horticulturist.

 

So I removed the blue tarp where ever i found it. The rest of the garden does not have tarp but a black membrane that appears to be porous. Some google search revealed it's a weed block. Is this what you refer to?

 

The soil is littered with stones and pebbles, an infinite amount. I'm just raking and raking for hours on end and removing via shovel and wheelbarrow