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Dandelions rife in lawn.

Our lawn is in an appalling condition. It has bare patches where I stupidly sprayed the weeds with a really heavy duty (rosate 36?) weedkiller and or course it's destroyed the lawn around the weed too, and the rest is probably three quarters dandelion, and other stalky weeds that I don't know the name of. To dig them out one by one would take forever. Can anyone recommend a decent lawn weedkiller which really will tackle the weeds and give the lawn a good feed? The bit I need to treat is about 35' x 25'. And how best to treat the bald patches?  That's half of the garden. The rest of it is a worse nightmare - said rosate used to destroy a jungle of large weeds and old shrubs, now a burnt brown mess, underpinned by horrible ancient blue sheeting (originally put down to kill the weeds no doubt but now torn and the weeds growing through), plus stones and pebbles thrown on top, for God knows what reason, by a previous owner. Is a rotavator the best idea here? Or will it just get snagged up in the blades? Eventual aim is to turf and match up with the rest, which, by then, will be a bowling green! Help!!

Posts

  • Dave MorganDave Morgan Posts: 3,123

    Cheryl, any proprietry weed and feed will be ok, even the cheaper ones will do the job, follow the directions on the box or bottle. As for a rotovater, I'd be more inclined to hand dig as any perennial weeds left alive will be chopped up and grow again. Hand digging although hard work is the best method. Afterwards you can spray anything left as it comes up.

  • hogweedhogweed Posts: 4,053

    For the lawn, use any weed and feed as above. Read the instructions thoroughly and follow them. For the bare patches, mix up a pail of fine compost and a good handful or two of grass seed. Rake the bare patches and add some of the compost/seed mix. Firm in and keep watered. In future, for lawn weeds either treat the whole lawn with weed and feed or treat each weed with a proprietary lawn weed killer - it will not kill the grass only the weeds.

    I assume you used a weedkiller like Roundup which has not killed the soil. For your borders, scrape off as much of the gravel/stones as you can and dispose of. Pull up the polythene and dispose of. Manually dig over the area pulling up the dead weeds and shrubs and digging in the residue of the gravel/stones. Leave for a few weeks and kill any weeds that do come up either with Roundup or by digging them up.

    If you have used a weedkiller which has killed the soil, do all of the above and wait for about 6 months before planting anything!

    'Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement' - Helen Keller
  • Many thanks both of you, looks like lots of hard work ahead!
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