Lawn restoration

[reigns]

Trying to restore a garden to just being lawn. We bought our home off of a retired couple who loved gardening as a hobby but I have two little ones, so I neither have time nor interest in trying to keep the garden looking lovely. We've gone and put up all of the plants on Facebook and a bunch of eager gardeners have helped us clear out most of the plants (we still have a few ferns and agaves that are either going to get left out on the street for free pickup, or will eventually just be put in a skip bin) but now I've got two jobs ahead of me:

1. Clearing the decorative black bark from old gardens and stones from the makeshift paths and restoring those areas to lawn; and
   
2. Dealing with the existing lawn which has pot holes on one side where the previous owners used to park a car on it, and then it has ugly weeds right across it
   

For job #1: is it as easy as following this guide on the Mitre10 website? I just dig up all the shit, put some extra soil and toss seeds out like is a lolly scramble, then wet it all?

For job #2: I bought some Yates Weed & Feed - reckon that will work? I'd rather not go around pulling them all out by hand because that sucks and there's a lot of them

Half tempted to just concrete it all but I like grass. I just hate shit grass. And gardening.

[harm_less]

If you're going for option #2 be sure to note the safety precautions for that product. Particularly "Keep children, pets, wildlife and birds off treated lawns until the spray is dry." if you have little tackers.

[hazelnut2]

I would use LawnPro Turf Clean Ultra. Stay away from  Weed'n'Feed it's not nearly as good.

[king1]

tried that Weed & Feed stuff on a couple of occasions and was less than impressed... nothing died and didn't really look an healthier.  If you just want kill weeds in lawns , I use Turfix in a 2 litre spot sprayer bottle.  Kills like roundup, maybe a bit slower, but safe for grasses, so you can overspray the weeds as much as you like

[Oh_hunnihunni]

Best lawns are Autumn seeded.

But lawns themselves are a sign of decadent Western consumerism. What you should be doing is turning the lot over to vegies. The kids'd love it. Or wildflowers. The bees'd love that. You could put in a hive. Much more productive than kids, bees.

Think of all that honey.

[Magoo]

my wife mows the lawns. im pretty much barred from anything petrol or power driven.

[reigns]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions, I'll have a look at those Turfix and LawnPro products. Will probably do it when the 2 yo is at daycare. The newborn hasn't touched grass yet but he can go for gold once we've sorted all of the weeds out.

And I'm going to vote no on bees. We currently have a wasps nest somewhere around the house. They don't need mates.

[Oh_hunnihunni]

Bees and wasps are deadly enemies. And bees only sting when threatened, it costs them their life to do so, unlike wasps which are aggressive beasts who can repeat sting.

But yes, teenies are best protected from the world until they can fight back.

[reigns]

Bees and wasps are deadly enemies. And bees only sting when threatened, it costs them their life to do so, unlike wasps which are aggressive beasts who can repeat sting.

But yes, teenies are best protected from the world until they can fight back.

Bees and wasps don't like each other? That is a pleasant surprise..

.. though I'm sure I can't count on a bee to come save me from an angry wasp.

[Magoo]

raze it

[Oh_hunnihunni]

Wasps raid hives and kill bees and steal from the hives. Bees mob wasps that venture too close and sting them to death. But a sick hive will fall prey to wasps...

It is one of the signs of disease in the hive that beekeepers watch for.

[TygerTung]

I consider that anything green that grows on the lawn is grass. So we have a lot of different types of grass on the lawn now.

[reigns]

We've just found, after doing a bit of weeding, that our property with this 1940s house has a line of concrete built around three sides of the boundary line, holding in the fence posts. Helpful for having a definitive "Here's the boundary line" discussion but there's fence inside the boundary that cuts across half of the front law facing the street which has both concrete holding the fence posts, and concrete lining the.. uh.. garden part? Like, the planter box part but instead of having wood, it's like a hands-width thick line of concrete.

Was this an old housing landscaping thing? I don't remember seeing it ever and it means probably a few fun weekends swinging a sledgey before I can properly restore the full front lawn to what we want it to be.

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Also, how shit are weeds? Bastards get everywhere and keep showing up. Found two dead birds inside a thick bunch of tobacco weeds, I think the neighbourhood cats left them there.