bluebells and weeds

strawberrybee

Hi, I'm a newbie, never done any gardening before but really want to get ours sorted.

I moved in with my boyfriend last year and since having a baby I really want to get our garden done so that we can take her outside to play. The problem is that its going to take a lot of work and I have no idea what I'm doing.

It's basically a bit of a jungle! We cut the lawn a while ago and there are loads of dandelions and other weeds in it. My dad suggested just dumping loads of weedkiller on it and planting new grass, but we don't want to do that as the grass we have is really good quality and there are also little patches of bluebells that spring up which we don't want to kill.

If anyone has any advise on how to deal with it I'd be really grateful

Thanks

stumpycat

The best way to kill dandelions is to dig the root out - we use a screwdriver. It's time consuming, but quite enjoyable (if you like that sort of thing!) :rotfl:

Mojisola

Use a glyphosate spray on the individual dandelions and other big weeds - lots of own brand sprays around.

Cutting the lawn regularly will reduce the other weeds as long as you don't cut it too short.

Kay_Peel

I think you've got enough on your plate to be thinking about improving or even reseeding your lawn.

As Mojisola says - just keep cutting the grass for the time being.

I have a very effective and lazy way of dealing with dandelions in my lawn.

I simply pour boiling water straight from the kettle, or from the saucepan, onto them one at a time. Even when I warm a teapot with boiling water, I walk into the garden and throw the scalding contents onto a dandelion. Then I move one of my small pots and plonk it on top of the boiled dandelion. I take the pot away after a couple of days. I've got a lot of brown patches on my lawn - but so what? It would look a lot worse with Lawn weedkiller.

I know you want it to look right but I've found that you can make a poor lawn presentable just by neatening the edges and keeping the grass short. Re-seeding a lawn is a major project that needs a lot of labour, time and attention - and I bet you don't have much of that!

Come the end of September, you may want to apply weedkiller before covering the worst of the area with some weed suppressant material (or black plastic, carpets or whatever you have to hand). You will starve the grass and weeds of light, air and water and after a few Autumn and Winter months you'll have killed most of them. By the middle of Spring, your weeding task will be halved, if not more than halved, and you can think about making a new lawn.

Good luck :beer: