On Wed, 17 Apr 2013 13:44:53 +0000, MichaelD
wrote:


Pruned

Does this all sound achievable?

Without wanting to appear rude, a simple suggestion: "STOP!".

It's difficult to work out from the photos what you've pulled
up/chopped down but you mention brambles and that alone sets a warning
bell ringing. I'd also expect a lot of other perennial weeds around in
neglected ground.

Using a mini digger to remove the stumps and roots in very defined and
contained areas will minimise the risk but using it to "pull up the
grass ... and level ..." worries me - you risk creating a weed and
bramble patch very quickly by dividing and spreading roots. Also,
where something is close against the fence, dig carefully as the
roots will go under the fence and you may end up removing the fence
with the stump! Apologies if I'm stating the obvious but better safe
than sorry.

Using a rotovator as you intend will make matters worse as it won't
pull up the roots; it'll chop them up into even smaller pieces and
spread them all over the place.

I suggest that you take a more patient approach and, if you want to
remove remaining green growth (the grassed area looks recoverable with
minimal effort by the way), you follow Martin's suggestion of chemical
attack with glyphosate to kill off the top growth plus the roots
attached to it before you do anything else. Downside is that you need
to allow time for the stuff to work - the top growth will die before
the roots so you really need patience!

Also, consider how you are going to water a newly seeded lawn in dry
weather (if we get any), particularly the end that's 90 feet away from
the house. You can't walk on the lawn while it's establishing, nor
leave a hose or two lying on it connected to sprinklers that you can
control from the house end. So you may want to consider a pathway up
the middle. If you're going to leave that clothes dryer there, you'll'
need a path to that at least.

If you have children who want to play on the lawn in the summer,
definitely keep the grass you've got! A newly seeded lawn isn't going
to be ready for normal use for at least 6 months, preferably up to a
year!

Although you *can* seed a lawn at almost any time with the right seed,
I'm assuming you don't want to spend the earth and so your spring
sowing window with general purpose seed will only run for about
another 3 weeks. It will be better if you delay seeding until the
latter part of August into early September.

In any event, if you want anything like a decent lawn, and even if
you do rotovate, the preparation with your heels and a rake will take
you some time. Then you should leave the ground to rest for a while to
allow any weed seeds/roots to develop and remove them, then rake etc.,
again. If the soil is heavy you need to think about drainage too!
You'll need to add something to help the grass to establish (if you're
not organic then Growmore will do the job). If you don't do this part
of the job properly, you will end up with something similar to the
grass area you have and which you say you want to remove.

If you have a lot of birds and/or cats in your area, you'll need to
protect the ground from cats using it as a toilet and birds feasting
on the seed. Netting held a couple of inches above ground on some
small sticks maybe?

If you've never seeded a lawn like this before, Hessayon's book "The
Lawn Expert" will be a very worthwhile investment of under a tenner.

Cheers, Jake
=======================================
Urgling from the East end of Swansea Bay where the
showers of April have arrived!