New Lawn or Seeds??

tain

We moved into our house last October and have since totally ripped up all the fake grass and filled in the pond, and are now left with a garden of dirt (and a few too many weeds now sprouting up...).

We originally planned on getting some new lawn for it in the autumn (which feels like now...), but we've got a baby that is due at the start of October. We budgeted around £300 for topsoil and lawn, and we can't help but think we'd really like to save that money if we could...

• Would using seed in the garden prove too much work with a new baby just round the corner? We really are NOT green fingered...
• Is it still an ok time of year for seeds to go in?
• Will getting the seed, maybe getting topsoil still, netting to go over it, etc. all mount up to a similar cost as lawn? Or is it a very big money saver if we do it right?
• What is the chances of it totally failing?
• How much work is it to get rid of all the weeds, and how much maintenance will this take?

+ feel free to add in anything I may have missed, as I have almost no idea about anything in the garden...

Thanks!

Grenage

Seed is much cheaper; you can often get topsoil free on freecycle or gumtree. How big is your garden?


I never bother netting grass seed, I just over-seed rake it lightly.


You still have to prepare the ground for turf, so the same sort of work is involved.

Primrose

Seed will be much cheaper and if part of your lawn is going to be in shade for some of the day you could get two different types of seed and sow them in different areas.
If the weeds are bad you could use glysoohate spray or use it in a watering can on the worst culprits but the more thoroughly you Weed, the better your lawn will be.
You will still have to rake and level the area whether you sow seed or use turf but check the weather forecast before sowing or laying turf. If we have a warm dry autum you will still have to water or the seed and turf will die and your money will be wasted.

If you,re planning the lawn as a play area for children grass seed might be better as you can select a heavy duty lawn seed which will be more durable.

I wouldn't,t worry too much about top soil. Just sow seed more thickly and rake it in. Providing the area is kept watered you ahould start to see the first shoots coming through in about a fortnight. Just be careful not to trample on the young grass sprouts and if it needs to be watered do it with a hosepipe spray.

I don,t see why, once sown, grass seed should be more work than turf. Both will need light mowing once the grass gets long enough to cut.

tain

Grenage wrote: »

Seed is much cheaper; you can often get topsoil free on freecycle or gumtree. How big is your garden?


I never bother netting grass seed, I just over-seed rake it lightly.


You still have to prepare the ground for turf, so the same sort of work is involved.

It's about 50m2. We get a LOT of birds in the garden, if that makes a difference to the seeding.

Good shout on the free topsoil, we'll look into that.

tain

Primrose wrote: »

Seed will be much cheaper and if part of your lawn is going to be in shade for some of the day you could get two different types of seed and sow them in different areas.
If the weeds are bad you could use glysoohate spray or use it in a watering can on the worst culprits but the more thoroughly you Weed, the better your lawn will be.
You will still have to rake and level the area whether you sow seed or use turf but check the weather forecast before sowing or laying turf. If we have a warm dry autum you will still have to water or the seed and turf will die and your money will be wasted.

If you,re planning the lawn as a play area for children grass seed might be better as you can select a heavy duty lawn seed which will be more durable.

I wouldn't,t worry too much about top soil. Just sow seed more thickly and rake it in. Providing the area is kept watered you ahould start to see the first shoots coming through in about a fortnight. Just be careful not to trample on the young grass sprouts and if it needs to be watered do it with a hosepipe spray.

I don,t see why, once sown, grass seed should be more work than turf. Both will need light mowing once the grass gets long enough to cut.

Thanks, it's the weeding that we're most worried about. We pulled up the old fake grass and pond in April/May but it was too hot to put lawn down so we've left it fallow and it's almost entirely covered with a whole bunch of different weeds. Will glyphosate spray kill all of them, with no negative effect on the grass seeds?

We've got a year or two until it's a proper play area, but a good heavy duty grass seed sounds like what we need anyway. Cheers.

Primrose

I don't use glysophate personally but all accounts seem to suggest it will do a good job. However, you will then have to wait a few weeks for the weeks to die and to all be pulled out.


In retrospect, pulling up the fake grass when you did was probably a mistake as it allowed the weeds to thrive. An alternative would be to cover the area with black polythene or put the false lawn back over the weeds roughly so they're deprive of air and moisture and die naturally. They would then still have to be raked up and disposed of.

Grenage

tain wrote: »

It's about 50m2. We get a LOT of birds in the garden, if that makes a difference to the seeding.

Good shout on the free topsoil, we'll look into that.

There's an old rhyme:


Four seeds in a row,
one for the rook,
one for the crow,
one will wither,
and one will grow


As long as the majority of the seeds are raked lightly into the topsoil, you'll likely be OK. If it's little effort, then by all means net away.


I'd be tempted to glyphosate if the area was a mass of weeds; it will do no harm to the seed. You'll probably find they come up again once you've prepared the area and old seeds/root are disturbed. Spray on a still day, as any carried on the wind will be bad news for anything else in the garden. You can get the concentrates (like Rosate 360) online for a fraction of the cost of the diluted brands.


I left the prepared surface of our lawn for a couple of weeks before seeding - giving weeds a chance to pop up and be pulled out..

Farway

A tip I heard was pre germinate the grass seed, just mix it in a bag of compost or whatever sowing medium, leave about a 5 days, then scatter the mixture

Primrose

Farway wrote: »

A tip I heard was pre germinate the grass seed, just mix it in a bag of compost or whatever sowing medium, leave about a 5 days, then scatter the mixture

I think this might work in very small quantities if you were just patching a few bare spots on a lawn but would be very difficult to manage for replacing a whole lawn, especially if you started the process and then found that the weather turned very wet and prevented you from scattering the whole mixture in a timely way. Also, once the seed starts germinating, it needs good strong sunlight to grow and if it starts of life in a bag with no air, light or inadequate moisture, it will not get off to a strong start and the seed could even rot. .

Richmc

Plus one for Glyphosate, cheap enough on eBay I just got 5L for £27 including P&P.-

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GALLUP-xl-5L-10L-15-L-20-L-Strong-Professional-Glyphosate-Weedkiller/232320928654?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&var=531573133348&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

Seeding is harder work than turf, but very satisfying. I have found invaluable information from-

https://www.lawnsmith.co.uk/

Bit geekey but really good advice and they supply seed and fertilisers etc. Good luck! just remember to keep watering for the first few months. If you use seed remember grass is a rhizome, one seed sends out side shoots underground, so at first your lawn will look sparse but by the spring will be thick and lush.

Edit - Glyphosate neutralises when it hits the soil but takes a couple of weeks to work, it's a systemic killer so needs to take it's poison through the leaves into the roots, the weeds will bolt i.e. grow really fast till they run out of energy then die back, that's when you start your fine soil preparation. Read the info on the lawnsmith site and follow it to the letter, you won't fail.

tain

Is it possible to overseed your garden? Or is the only risk that you'll be wasting a bit too much money?

Sounds like I've got a lot of work cut out for myself as these weeds are pretty overrun at the moment! Might try covering them for this last few weeks of 'summer', and if that doesn't do it then I'll get the weed killer out ready for a good planting when we're well into autumn.

Thanks!