"Keith Hampson" wrote in message
...

Welcome Keith!

please excuse me but I am totally new to gardening, I have just bought a
house so starting fro scratch, but would like to help I can get.

the problems I have with the garden are as follows:

1. the lawn last summer was covered in ants, making it very annoying when
we
sat in our garden, how can I stop the ants this year? maybe put poison
down?

Where I live the ants seem to occupy sandy areas, maybe your soil is sandy?


2. I have some 4 old tree stumps in the garden which have been cut about 5
inch tall, how can I get shut of them, I know you can buy tree stump
killer,
is it any good?

Sorry I don't know enough about stumps, not got any in my garden,
but if the stump killer liquid/powder? is not too expensive, then its worth
ago.

3. All the lawn is very hilly and patchy, how is the best way of levelling
it, someone told me to put top soil down, another dig it all up and seed
it,
I don't have much spare money, the lawn is 42 ft x 120 ft

Thats quite a fair size lawn! I Just priced some seed on the net and to
re-grow a new lawn from seed for your lawn dimensions (469 m2) sorry about
the metric! but this is how its sold nowadays! Would be between £78 - £102
(for 15 Kg) enough for your lawn size.

To re-turf would cost £613 - £1186 for the turf alone!

You could level any lumps in the lawn as a previous poster suggested.

As I mentioned before, I get the feeling the soil beneath your lawn is of a
sandy nature, and will encourage the ants, and I know this is going to be
hard work on a lawn this size but you need to buy/borrow a lawn aeriator,
the kind that removes small plugs of soil. I would do it in sections then I
would rake in well a mixture of topsoil and compost, this would hopefully
retain moisture for longer and may discourage the ants.

I would avoid using a weed and feed mixture as this would prevent you from
sowing grass seed in the near future.

If you have got children or pets I would leave seed sowning until Sept/Oct
when they would be less likely to want to run about on it.

One other thing, established lawns love being cut, it promotes root growth,
so in the height of the summer season you need to be cutting your lawn twice
a week!

Welcome to gardening! ( mind you with a lawn your size it could be more like
farming! ).


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