In message , Steve
Turner writes
Terry wrote:

: Hi my son as a new garden and is having trouble with weeds and couch
: grass. We have tried all sorts of weed killers and even tried sodium
: chlorate, the weeds still come through.Thinking about some black
: plastic and then covering it with an old carpet he has to get rid of,
: is this the correct way round or should it be carpet and then black
: plastic??

I just lay black plastic on soil I am not cultivating.

I'm very new to this gardening lark.

At the start of 2007 the garden was 45 feet by 24 feet of couch grass,
bramble, bind weed and other assorted weeds. It had been like this since
about 1990 - only strimmed once or twice a year. Basically all I did was
spend 3 or 4 months - maybe a couple of hours each day at weekends and 30-60
minutes after work, and not every day - digging and digging.

At first I was chucking the sods in a pile that was skipped, but later I
simply knocked soil off and put them in the brown bin. Then I went over it
all again digging/forking up roots.

There's still some couch grass in one third of the garden but next to none
where the lawn will go, and none at all at the top where some plants have
been planted. Weeds are still growing but all from seed.

I feel for you! We moved into this house (1961) when it was new, with
a garden like a builder's yard, because ours was the last house on the
row.

I dug out a whole bag and half a bag of set cement, and three and a half
railway sleepers...
--
Gordon H