Garden preparation before the lawn

Hello everyone,

our garden currently looks like this. We want to lay the lawn soon and wanted to ask you how we can best tackle the weeds.

I am not a fan of chemical substances, so I have thought of the following.

1. Remove weeds using a motor tiller (garden area approx. 400 m2)
2. Dispose of weeds
3. Remove/level humus
4. Prepare garden area for lawn (lime, fertilizer, ...)
5. Sow the lawn

What do you think? Do you have other ideas or suggestions?

Thank you

If you do that with a milling cutter, you'll have more seeds in the soil than you'd like. Go there and pull them out, then continue with your plan.

I also fear that you won't get around doing the manual labor if you don't want to replace the soil generously (which still wouldn't guarantee being weed-free). Before sowing, I would also consider whether [Rasenkantensteine] should go somewhere and set them immediately.

A German admired the wonderful lawn of his English friend somewhere in the south of England. "How do you manage that?" he asked him. He replied: "Weeding, watering, and mowing." "Is that all?" "Yes, for 400 years."

1) Remove as much weed as possible. We therefore used 1 pass of glyphosate to catch it all. 2) Loosen the soil: this is done with a rotary tiller. If none is available, use a cultivator. If the soil is very compacted due to construction machinery, first dig over or plow. 3) Rake flat, removing stones in the process. 4) Sow grass seed. 5) Roll and water. 6) When it starts to grow, give a little N fertilizer. A little! Not too much. 7) After the first mowing, give a little more N fertilizer. Again, a little! Don’t overdo it. A little means: 5-liter bucket for 200 sqm. Now let it run its course, just be careful it doesn’t get too dry. Mow often. K.

We got that done last year. Of course without herbicide - please do not use it for the sake of the environment.

First, we dug everything up with a spade, then loosened it with the cultivator, removed all the roots, then smoothed it with the rake and added some organic fertilizer, sowed, rolled it, and then I watered three times a day. When the lawn has grown tall enough after a few weeks, it is mowed. For us, the result turned out well. Occasionally raspberry shoots still come up, but I just mow them away regularly. Since I left two groups of raspberries standing, they will keep sending out runners; but I simply don't find a perfectly flawless lawn important.

Since this year, we have also left about 40m2 unmown under the plum tree and sowed wildflowers there. For bees, butterflies, and other insects. Thistles and such are also growing there now; so far it looks very pretty.