Really need some advice please :)

Hi there, moved into a new house at the end of last year, which has a garden that is around 10 meters wide and maybe 30 meters long roughly.

The garden had been left to run riot, when I first came you couldn't even physically get past halfway down it, they strimmed it before we moved in and they found an upright tumble drier halfway down that you could not see from a few feet away it was that bad.

Of coarse as it was mostly nettles they have come back strong this year, I have bought a sprayer and some weed killer and sprayed the whole garden, this stopped them growing and made them look sick but a month later they were still standing, so I have hit half of it again with a much higher dose of weedkiller and so far they seem to be dying nicely, I aim to do this on the rest, but it is taking a long time for them to die, we did start trying to dig them up, but some of the roots are nearly the thickness of my arm!

My aim is to have around half of the garden grass, a large shed top left hand corner, then a large vegetable patch on the left hand side.

My main issue is, once I have killed all the nettles off, what do I do next?

Do I get a decent rotovator and go over the whole garden, leaving the old nettle roots where they are, they try and level it best I can then turf or grass seed it?

Or would it be better to get some sort of mini digger to take a layer off the top of the whole garden?

What do i do with all the dead nettles? just rotovate it into the soil?

Any and all advice would be most welcome.

Thanks in advance.

 

If you are using a Glyphosate based weed killer (which is the type I would recommend) then it will take 2 weeks before you see any effect. It will only work well on actively growing plants - so if it was strimmed and then sprayed it will be less effective - best to let the growth come back strongly and then spray. For well established plants you'll need to spray a couple of times at least.

Glyphosate translocates to the roots, where it upsets the physiology of the plant and kills it. That's why it takes a while to appear to have any effect, but should also mean that the roots are dead, and thus if you rotavate you should be OK (normally chopping up the roots of weeds just means that each piece will then grow a new plant )

Hand digging the plot would enable you to "bury" the top few inches of soil as you turn over the soil, this would bury the weed seed which will be sitting on the surface, but an alternative is to rotavate and then diligently hoe any weeds that come up [in any borders] in the next year or two.

I wouldn't scrape it off with a digger, you'll be left with less topsoil, or having to buy some more which will be expensive (and may have its own weed seeds!)

If the house is recently built the garden may just be buried builders rubble, which you need to remove before you will be able to make a successful garden. Criminal that they get away with just burying all their waste, but there we are :(

You could heap them up in the corner. They are full of nutrients and when they have composted you can put them back on the soil. Or just rotavate them in, but long stringy things like that tend to get wound round the tines, which is then a nuisance to untangle, so might be better to strim all the dead stuff and then rake it off before digging / rotavating.

Good news is that Nettles only grow in rich soil

 

Hello and welcome to GC.

Well the good news is you know the soil is good. Contrary to popular belief, nettles wont thrive just anywhere. They like good rich soil.

The other good news is that nettles are not deep rooted, but the bad news is they do produce a gazillion seeds.

You said you've sprayed it. What with? If its Round Up (or other glyphosate based herbicide), then they will most likely be dead. Nettles are very fibrous, and stay quite rigid when they dry out. Some weedkillers only tackle top growth, and wont kill the roots.

If you're planning to lawn over much of the garden, then nettles are unlikely to be a problem. Grass will out-compete nettles any day, as long as your new lawn is regularly mowed.

What to do with the nettles? Well people soak them in water for two weeks or more to make a nitrogen rich plant feed, but I'm not sure that would work with nettles that are dead after been sprayed. Certainly the fibre will do no harm in the compost heap.

 

Yes I used a product very similar to roundup, weedol I believe it was called. And the nettles were strimmed the end of last year, I have waited for them to grow in the summer (now) before weed killing them.

When I say what do I do with them, I mean once dead do I go round and gather them all up? or can I just leave them and rotovate it and rotovate them into the soil?

And maybe 1/2 will be grass, just over a 1/4 vegetable patch and just under 1/4 workshop/shed.

Once rotovated what's the best way to go about getting it all flat as well? I was thinking a big roller combined with rotovator and some manual raking?

One last thing (sorry for all the questions I have never had a garden before) what is your take on grass seed vs turf? I have 3 young kids so was going to go the turf route as I figure it will be the fastest way to get a lawn for them to play on, but the price of turf is pretty high vs seed.

 

I have just the one young kid (2 if you count me, wife is the mature one in our household), and faced a similar dilemma 3 years ago when we moved in here.

I went for the seed option. As you say, it is the cheaper option. It is not that slow either. We were using our new lawn by about 3 months after seeding it. Granted it was only light use at first. No games or anything that really churn it up.

My sister bought her house about a year before I bought mine, and she went for the turf option. It cost them several hundred quid in all but it did 'look' finished much quicker. It wasn't finished though, turf needs time to bed in. I can't say how much time because I have no first hand experience there, but I remember seeing it about a week after it was done, and gaps had formed between the strips where the turf had dried a bit and contracted.

 

If it was Weedol it won't have killed them. Weedol contains Diquat which will just desicate the foliage causing it to go brown; that will kill annual weeds / weak plants, but it won't kill the roots of more sturdy things, including weeds as they are called weeds for their ability to come back again and again!

If you still have the packet? suggest you check if it had Glyphosate as the main ingredient and it not reapply one that does, such as Roundup.

You could heap them up in the corner. They [Nettles] are full of nutrients and when they have composted you can put them back on the soil. Or just rotavate them in, but long stringy things like that tend to get wound round the tines, which is then a nuisance to untangle, so might be better to strim all the dead stuff and then rake it off before digging / rotavating.

You need to rake it to a half decent tilth, and reasonably smooth, you can then drag a ladder over it (tie a rope to the rung at each end) front-to-back and left-to-right which will move the high bits into the hollows. Although a roller will help it won't make it perfectly smooth, as its main function is to compact the soil. However, you do need to compress the soil, somewhat, after rotavating so that there are no air pockets that then sink. You can walk over it (with small, shuffling, steps) to achieve that. Do it only when dry such that the soil doesn't stick to your boots.

Personally I think its very environmentally unfriendly - stripping off an inch or two of the best agricultural top soil and carting it half way across the country ... but it gets quicker results than seed.

If it will wait until Autumn that is the ideal time to sow grass seed. The weeds are shutting up shop for the winter so the grass will get a head start. Hopefully you won't need the lawn much/at all during the winter, so not being able to walk on it won't be an issue, and by the Spring it will be a done-deal and only need watering if there is a Summer drought.

Turf will need watering daily for a couple of weeks, and then 2 or 3 times a week for a month after that, to get it through the Summer. Grass seed sown now will be tricky if we have a dry / hot summer.

Seed gives you a lot more choice over the type of grass (from rough / rugged to bowling green, and also shade tolerance); turf tends to be "one type", particularly if you get it from your local "Shed", although you can order it for delivery (e.g. from Rolawn) which will give you more choice.

Soil preparation is pretty much the same for both Seed and Turf, so there isn't any significant difference in that regard.

 

Thanks a lot for the reply's, yes weedols main ingredient is Glyphosate

Sounds like the best bet is wait until Autumn and sow some grass seed then

Once again thanks a lot.

 

There are various products named Weedol, which is confusing.

Weedol 2 contains Diquat - can't see the point of using this, but the Weedol name has beena round for ages, so maybe it attracts fans still.

Weedol Rootkill Plus - this one contains Glyphosate

 

Ah yes my mistake, didn't realise there were two seperate products. It is indeed the rootkill plus version.

 

Excellent! Glad you used that one, and not the other which would have been useless for the job. I bet some people just grab anything labelled "Weedol" and some will then be disappointed :(

 

Never knew the art of weedkilling could be so confusing :D haha

 

If you ever crack it let us know?

 

As an aside. Rather than pay through the nose for Roundup or Weedol, go to your local Wilkos and buy a litre of straight Glyphosate for around £12. Two things about your nettles. 1, they will probably need spraying at least another time. 2, when dead, and before rotovating, the roots should be dug out by hand. Also, DO NOT put any plant material treated with herbicides on the compost heap. Either burn it or put in the recycling.

 

Why's that Dai?

 

Because it will stay in the material you use in the garden. As you well know.lol