On 1/17/2012 1:24 PM, Sparx wrote:
Hello all, I am new to the forum and gardenening I have no knowledge in
gardening what-so-ever .... Basically me and the mrs have moved into our
new house but the gardens are terrible they was just full of 6ft high
brambles and stinging nettles I have cleared all the vegetation out so
now it's just a muddy mess we want to get a lawn laid down ... I was
just going to dig the big clumps of bramble roots out then rotovator it
and level it out then lay the turf but my father-in-law says if I just
chop it up with the rotovator the brambles will just come back so I've
started digging it over and taking all the roots out (Jesus you have
never seen so many roots it's just like a mat of roots) but when I told
my uncle he says that I should leave the new growth to come through then
use a weed killer like round up or something so the roots die so I don't
really know what to do I really want the quickest way ... Well actually
the mrs wants the quickest way possible to get rid of them so we have
got a lawn in time for our daughters birthday party so what would you
guys suggest?
Thanks for reading Adam




The one time I tried it with brambles I had pretty good luck attacking the
area with a high-power rented cultivator. There was a lot of shoulder
wrenching pain as the roots continually tangled with the spinning blades
stalling the engine and it took many stops and starts to untangle and
dispose of what got ripped out but a Saturday took care of it all.

This was an area of perhaps 40X20 feet at the very back of a property I had
bought. After the cleanup I had a large truckload of good topsoil hauled in
and I moved it back there with a wheelbarrow in thirty+ round-trips, graded
and packed it down a bit, and seeded liberally. That was the best part of
my lawn at that house and I never had a problem with the brambles coming
back. I suspect that any that started to come up were not capable of
withstanding being mowed down every week so they were never able to
reestablish a foot(root)hold again.

If only I could have such an easy time with the English ivy which has
ownership of at least 1/3 of an acre of my present wooded lot. It doesn't
die quite so easily.