Completely redesign the garden area

Thanks for the ideas/instructions, exactly what I was looking for.

The backyard is about 620 m2 in size. We don’t have any machines – it should work without them if possible.

It’s a bit hard to estimate how much soil is there – I’ll have to try to measure and calculate. Ultimately, everything has to go – if there’s too much for the backyard, we can certainly fit everything in the front yard (another 80-100 m2).

We only have a rough plan: behind the house there is the terrace and a small lawn area, then in the middle section the vegetable beds (probably tendentially on the left and right sides, where the trench collector runs), and possibly a few fruit trees in the middle, then in the rear part a few more fruit trees and the compost heap/tool shed, etc.

The garden should be as flat as possible – we have enough “3D” to fix around the house (towards the neighbor), I don’t want to start anything further in the garden unless necessary.

In summary, if I understood everything correctly:

[*]Spread the soil, removing weeds and stones
[*]Smooth it with the rake
[*]Plant green manure, let it work, mow & leave it as mulch


[*]or rototill?


[*]In autumn: trees & shrubs, possibly lawn
[*]Late winter/spring: vegetable beds

Does this make sense?

Settling will certainly still come, although I hope that everything related to the trench collector has already happened – the thing has been in since autumn 2020, and last winter it also started heating or was really “stressed” with a (gentle) screed drying program, so I assume that the biggest movements are over.

Just wanted to be smart and say, "not rake but harrow, otherwise it gets difficult!", and then I googled again. I didn’t know that in southern Germany the harrow is called rake. What I haven’t found out yet is what people in southern Germany call a northern German rake?

Northern German
Harrow:


Rake:

Your rake is a leaf rake here in the south

In the Aldi-(South) flyer, it is currently also available as a "fan broom." However, I had never heard of that before.

[*]Distribute soil, removing weeds and stones in the process
[*]Smooth with the rake
[*]Apply green manure, let it work, mow & leave as mulch


[*]or till?


[*]In autumn: trees & shrubs, possibly lawn
[*]Late winter/spring: vegetable beds

You will hardly be able to remove weeds by hand. Most weeds lie in the soil as seeds and come up as soon as they are brought to the surface by soil cultivation. The only help here is to mow 2-3 times during the fallow year before the weeds set seed. Most weeds do not tolerate mowing well. When tilling, you will bring weed seeds back to the surface. I can't say much about sowing in mulch; sometimes it works, sometimes not.