On May 1, 4:55*pm, TeaBag wrote:
Hello all. We have recently had a house built and so the "garden" is
just soil and boulders at the moment. We're planning on getting a lawn
down at the end of the summer. We're complete garden newbies as we've
always lived in flats (apart from renting a house previously where we
did mow the lawn). Now we have the chance to start a lawn from scratch
and so would like some advice from people who know, like yourselves.
Some information:

Location - 30 miles west of Aberdeen
Soil - quite a clay soil with lots of fist sized stones
Area - about 600 sq. metres (although we'll only be laying a lawn on
about 200 sq. m of it to start with)

I have a plan but please advise on how good/bad you may think it is:

Step 1:

Spray all weeds/ground with glyphosate


As Bob said, no need to spray bare ground. If you miss
some tiny weeds, you can go back and get them in the
second pass.




Step 2:

Spray all weeds/ground with glyphosate again two weeks later

Just spray what's still alive. Also, when you buy the glyphosate
look for the concentrated products, like 48%. It's a lot more
cost effective. I'd mix it to about 5%.





Step 3:

Once all weeds are dead, rotorvate ground (to make levelling easier)

I'd probably mow it first. And if there is a lot of weed debris,
maybe rake out most of it before tilling.

Also, how out of level is it? If there are just some areas that
need to be graded, do you really need to churn up the whole
thing?





Step 4:

Level and de-stone soil (and possibly add top-soil if needed)

Step 5 (if time permits):

Spray any new emerging weeds with glyphosate

Step 6:

Remove/dig in dead weeds

I'd forget about that. After all of the above, there shouldn't
be anything worth worrying about.




Step 7:

Trample/firm soil

That probably means roll lightly.




Step 8:

Lay turf

Are there any flaws or perhaps better ways to establish a new lawn?

The other alternative is to seed. It's funny. I live here in NJ,
and I seeded my lawn years ago. Right now it's nice and green,
actively growing. A friend bought a $1mil house in a sub-division
of recently built houses. The builder used sod. His lawn is barely
growing, doesn't look anywhere as good as mine. It didn't look as
good over winter either. Mine stayed a lot greener for more of the
winter. We both apply similar amounts of fertilizer etc. So, clearly
it's the variety of grass that's the difference. You would think
that
spring green-up, winter color, etc would be important to a sod
supplier,
but I guess not.... If you buy the seed yourself, you can choose the
exact grass you want. There are online references that show test
results for different grasses, rating color, texture, disease
resistance,
spring green-up, etc.

My point is that for all the work and expense you're going to go
through,
I'd spend some time researching the sod or seed you're going
to use. Getting a real nice grass may not cost anymore than a
crappy one and even if it does, it's not much more.


Also, I was looking at getting a wide-toothed rake such as the Chelwood
18E or 18K for raking up the stones as these rakes have a 4cm gap
between the teeth. Would you recommend any other or would one of these
do the job well?

No experience with those UK rakes.




Apologies for all the questions, but I really am new to this (plenty
more questions to come on growing veggies etc. but first things first!)
Thanks in advance for any advice you could possibly give.

--
TeaBag

With veggies, first thing is to find out what animals there are
that will eat them. Around here, NJ, the deer are so bad that without
a fence it's hopeless.