need advice regarding garden soil if someone could please help :)

marywooyeah

Hi there, my garden was basically an overgrown wreck. most of our garden was concrete with weeds everywhere and a massive hedge, until yesterday when i chopped back the hedge and cleared the majority of the weeds. in the middle of the garden is a patch of what i think is dead soil, it was covered in leaves and twigs which i swept up, and a few weeds. now i am left with dry and uneven soil, which i want to be able to use as a play area for my son.
can anyone advise how to make the ground level for him to play on, and is it possible to make this area grassy? thanks in advance

jaxx46

Giving this a bump 'cos I have a patch like this where previous occupants had a trampoline and would welcome some ideas. 1 thing I did learn when mine were little is if you're having a swing on the garden put some chicken wire down for the grass to grow through, it stops the roots being pulled out. Hopefully someone with more experience will be along soon x

covlass

I am no expert but I found this when I was research on laying a lawn it may help.
http://www.gardeningmasterclass.co.uk/h02-02-65-03.html

Kay_Peel

Well done, MaryWooyeah for reclaiming your garden. You've made a really good start by cutting back the hedge and clearing up the debris that was choking your soil.

The green patch will have been starved of light, air and water and you've now removed those barriers and given Mother Nature a chance to step in. I believe that you can do a few things to help it on its way, but that you can leave the bulk of the work to restore your green patch in Autumn.

It's going to be a play area, so it doesn't have to be a beautiful green sward like a Tennis court - it needs to be safe, even and presentable for the time being.

I'd rake it to remove any stones and further debris. By raking the area, I'll loosen the soil and when (if!) it rains the rain will soak through properly. For the next two weeks, I'd just continue raking it to see what came through and I'd zap any dandelions, buttercups, clover with some weedkiller.

If there were some deep holes or ruts then I might take a shovel full of soil from elsewhere in the garden and fill them for the time being.

If there were any sign of grass, then I'd mow the area - even though most of it is bare. I'd just want to keep the vegetation short, so that it could be used as a play area.

Later in the Autumn you might want to think about getiing some top soil and sowing grass seeds, but for now you just need to improve the light, air and watering needs of your garden.

Good lucK!

ausmummy

We had very uneven soil at the bottom of our garden which was previously a wild area of weeds and brambles. We chopped it back and was probably at where you are now. We dug it over to loosen up the soil and then raked level. It was then left for a week until we covered it in grass seed. The ground was then kept moist (watered first thing in morning and last at night. Three weeks later we now have a bright green carpet of grass ready to be ruined when we put DD play area things there. It looks quite funny looking at the bright green at the bottom compared to the rest of the lawn. We kept the excess soil to sieve and add to planters.

marywooyeah

thankyou for your replies, I found them very helpful. I will buy a rake and rake it about a bit, there are some craters where I dug up some massive weeds so we could fill those in, and then like the previous poster said sow some grass on there. I had no idea it could take as little as three weeks, thankyou so much I really hope I can make it into a nice play area for my toddler. you should have seen his face when he bounded outside and saw the playhouse there!

ausmummy

Just to say we do have really good soil here. We just bough a cheap grass seed. If you are worried about the quality of your soil you could get some soil imporver, or get grass seed that would grow anywhere. I don't know if you can use things like weed and feed until you actually have grass or not. Anyway just a thought if you need to imporve the soil. If you have other parts of the garden that have plants growing well you could get a bit of that soil to mix in to the area.