neglected garden

[jime17]

Hi guys,

Ive moved into a house and the gardens not been touched for about 5 years and did up until this week resemble the Amazon rain forests.

The majority of the vegetation seems to be blackberry bushes and other spiky nasty stuff which seems to have spawned from its original locations around the edges and now has roots all over what was once the lawn.

I've chopped it all down with a brush cutter and cleared it all. Will the roots of the blackberry bushes now die or do I have to dig them out?

sorry for rambling. (or should it be brambling?)

 

[breezer]

i suggest dig them out, unless that is you want black berries

 

[Thermo]

nature has a wonderful way of recovering.......dig them out, spray with a systemic weedkiller and a lot of hard work, will just about sort it out!

 

[nstreet]

If you don't dig them out you will never get rid of them. They are pig to dig out as well, never known such strong fiberous roots.

 

[oilman]

I wouldnt worry about whats under the lawn, it'l just give you heartache. Carry on mowing, they soon get peed off.

 

[STENDEC]

Well. Heres my advice. I had the exact same problem.

Two choices - Drastic and Permanent or Temporary and lazy.

The drastic option (Which I did - and it wasnt actually all that hard).

I waited until late august and then killed all the grass and weeds with a big spraying session with roundup and let the grass die back for about a fortnight, and let the Roundup leach away out of the soil. I then hired a big rotavator and churned up the entire old and rather tatty / weedy / thorny lawn (cost so far about £50). I then picked out all the roots and weeds remaining and raked the nice tilthy soil nice and level. Then I bought a tub of grass seed and some Sea Weed Meal and mixed the two together and scattered the seed. Hey presto - a few weeks later a nice new level, weed and thorn free lawn!! Total cost - one weekend, some TLC and about £65 cash. Two years later the lawn is superb and no thorns anywhere.

The lazy option

Let the thorns grow a bit and then spray them well with Roundup. Let them die back and then dig the roots out. The reason why you apply weedkiller is to attempt to get the little itty bitty roots infected with the roundup. This will help to kill them. Total cost - A bad back and £5.00 cash...but a lot of recurring problems are highly likely - see below:-

The main problem with this option is that it is actually really hard to dig these thorns bushes roots out. Not only that but any uninfected roots (even the itty bitty small ones) will re-grow and sucker up again and again and again. You will miss loads of roots and will be repeating this process every year (Probably twice a year). Not only that, but your lawn will never look good as the roots will divert moisture away from your grass, which can encourage perrenial weed growth and a fast dying / yellow lawn.

The choice is yours!!