Good Morning,

My problem is: I am hoping to plant some grass and grow a good looking even lawn but previously the soil had rock cemented over it and over the years and after removing the cemented rock many small rocks have been mixed into the soil it also contain many pieces of small plastic, glass and metal. What is the quickest way to get rid of this? They aren't big rocks that you can pick up in handfulls, they are mainly small and mixed in with the earth, LOTS of rocks. Does it realy matter as long as i get rid of most of it? any ideas?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, more details below...




18yrs old, first attempt at gardening, trying to turn a garden that looks more like a forest/rubbish dump into a good looking garden.

I am a very new young gardener with a massive job on my hands. My great aunt's garder has been left un-touched for about 4 years now apart from a quick clear out about a year and a half ago, just flattening the weeds. On return about a week ago i found weeds with gigantic roots, average height of the weeds were about 6ft and the garden looked more like a forest. I managed to flatten most of it in about an hour or 2 although the 'tree-looking' weeds took longer, still digging a few i left in. Have now diverted my attention to lifting up all the rock slates as i feel it will be easier to just work my way through the whole lawn with these out the way and have managed to lift all the rocks up. The garden is about 20x5 meters. I have also just used 3 sachets of weedol2 weedkiller on the soil area (14x5) which is atleast 4x the amount i was supposed to as it just seemed to pour out too fast, next time ill use a lower concentration.
Anyway the plan is to turn this garden/forest into something that i can relax in. I am hoping to lay lawn on the top level soil (14x5 area), build a shed from scratch, build a rockery, cement new brick for the few steps, cement a wall on the lower ground to section off a small area about (.5x6) in which to grow veg or anything else i decide to and section off an area on the top lawn (.5x14) so i have a specific area to grow mainly flowers. Hmm what else. Also a seating area made of the rocks i take up about .5m out from the corner of the wall. Also thinking of installing a water feature in the middle, although I may have to settle for the bird bath i allready have. I am also hoping to install or build a barbeque and 4 hooks at the top of the garden tied to trees above on which i can suspend a waterproof sheet when needed.

So anyway it sounds massive but it's mostly for fun and im enjoying it. I mainly used a metal stick to demolish most of the weeds but am obviously now digging them up. I am 18years old and this is my first attempt at any real gardening.

What i am thinking is i will keep people on forums upto date on my progress (I have pictures if you wish to see) and if anyone cares or can be bothered to read it maybe they can give me tips along the way.

Anyway next steps are ripping up the rest of the cemented rocks, digging up any rubbish and weeds in the lawn and trying to lay some grass if i haven't contaminated the lawn with way too much weedkiller. With regards to laying the grass, once the soil is as clean as i can get it i am going to simply rake it, spread to the seeds (left to right, top to bottom) and rake it again and cross my fingers, any ideas on anything would be great.

Thanks again,

Oh, I am also painting an old bench, rigging up a washing line to my room on the 1st floor and possibly building a table.