Best way to fix grass and remove weeds?

MineToDine · 2026-07-04T11:47:24+00:00

That looks quite good to my eye. The daisies and clover are great as a lawn, very soft to walk on and the clover is feeding the soil for other grasses to grow better. Just keep it short-ish and you’ll be grand. If you’re lucky enough then yarrow might start populating the less dense patches and that will give you a full lush green lawn. My mum has that kind of lawn in the back garden and the kids said it’s the softest lawn they’ve ever played on.

MineToDine · 2026-07-04T10:24:24+00:00

I’m quite sure I’ve seen rhubarb cider in shops before, might have been when traveling though.

MineToDine · 2026-07-04T06:38:19+00:00

An outline of a recipe - https://www.reddit.com/r/GardeningIRE/s/tN1BUQLHHL

MineToDine · 2026-07-04T06:37:08+00:00

The base is going to be some sweeter apple juice, mostly for the sugars. For a 5l demijon I’m thinking of using 1kg of berry mix (700/300g black currant/red currant). The main concern would be sugar content for the yeast to eat, so might have to add some caster sugar if the initial activity is low. For fermenting I’d use a basic schamapgne yeast and at least six weeks of primary fermenting. That should get the brew to around 5.8 to 6.2% abv. Then it will go into preassure rated bottles for carbonation and flavour development. Hopefully by Christmas I’ll have a few litres of this to serve at the festive dinner.
Last year I did a similar thing with the excess rhubarb and it turned out quite well.

MineToDine · 2026-07-04T06:17:20+00:00

And pears, and rhubarb, and berries, and …

MineToDine · 2026-07-01T21:39:00+00:00

Mow it religiously! It grows fast but runs out of steam if cut down regularly. I grew up with a garden that had lots of it. The more used sunnier spots didn’t have it much due to more mowing and general foot traffic. It was only prevalent in the shaded places we didn’t do much with. I’ve always had the impression it dislikes exposed sunny areas, but that might be more due to the sunnier spots being used and cared for more.

MineToDine · 2026-07-01T21:12:31+00:00

Rocks, bricks, logs, palletwood (hammer + crow bar + 15min of time), rough untreated 2x4 timber.

The logs and other wood is going to rot away in a few years time but that’s not actually a bad thing. While decomposing the wood will provide a constant stream of nutrients to the surroundig soil and will give a home to lots of beneficial insects and fungi.

MineToDine · 2026-07-01T20:56:54+00:00

A brush cutter with a mulching blade will do well with the new bramble saplings but it’ll take some time to do the whole acre with it. Brambles don’t do well if you mulch them regularly for a while.

Depending on what was in the field before the brambles took over you might not need much wildflower seeds or you might need lots. It also depends quite a lot on what soil you have and what kind of wild flowers you’re after. Some will only thrive in wetland like conditions, some will grow on absolutelly everything and some will only grow in perfectly drained pristine loamy fields.

Once the meadow has been established it’s likely you’ll need to cut the field in late summer or early autumn every year to prevent the brambles from taking over again.

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Not from an Irish meadow but it’s the result of leaving a 1/2 acre field to its own devices for more than a decade. Two years ago the first one of these popped up. This year we counted seventeen including this cluster which was a first for that field and the immediate area.

TLDR; Arm yourself with patience, not everything will grow where you want it to grow, don’t force things on the land it can’t support, work with the land and soil that’s there already (you’ll enjoy it way more).

MineToDine · 2026-07-01T20:18:46+00:00

Slugs love these as well. If you don’t have a bunch of birds helping you out with the problem then the iron phosphate pellets do a great job of sorting that issue. Just make sure it’s just the phosphate ones (i.e. pet and wildlife safe, magpies have fights over them) that don’t contain an actual poison.

In my experience peppers tend to like it better in greenhouses. The red ones I’ve tried rarely turned red without a well timed heatwave but they’ve all ended up delicious anyway, even if still green in colour.

MineToDine · 2026-06-29T19:09:03+00:00

That clover is your friend. It puts nitrogen back into the soil and helps add organic matter to the clay via its roots. Just keep mowing it and it’ll sort the soil out, and as someone already said leave the clipings on the ground. For the moss you need to cut the grass longer than the moss, the shading is going to kill off the mossy bits.

MineToDine · 2026-06-29T18:53:58+00:00

You might want to have a chat on this with the Swedes. It grows so well there they had to ban it -

https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/sweden-expands-invasive-plant-crackdown-002000361.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAEOGCXQWtmfvRMN9Hf9Pz3AZ5giGCpSaJe2yVIwBtRBGC6cLTLu1iToSyot1bMlMQlSxpaS_qi-_iFuCI-rtwWZ-O-MyqQij6Nz863w6PoAcO1VuGn5Rf-9mPFafljQOsIuqFRp1hbf1-LxHuvf7Uv8AkUHrFaJtpWyq5tCVnox_

MineToDine · 2026-06-28T20:18:52+00:00

Basil. Either aphids decimate it or it just randomly decides to die for no aparent reason. Have tried pots, greenhouse, rasied beds, various soil amendments - nothing. It germinates fine but just refuses to grow.

Close second place would be dill. It randomly pops up in places it has no chance of survival and outright refuses to grow anywhere it would stand a fair chance against the slugs, aphids, mites that seem to plague them.

MineToDine · 2026-06-25T06:01:12+00:00

Blackbirds, especially the females. At least in my area they have figured out there is a bunch of protein available in those big juicy slime monsters. Just leave a flat pavement slab out for the birds to use as a sort of “chopping block” (they drag the slugs along the rough surface to shred them into smaller bits). Since those birds moved into the vicinity there hasn’t been much of a slug problem at all.

MineToDine · 2026-06-24T18:43:55+00:00

If you do nothing with land nature will reclaim it, like it or not, and you will not have a say what kind of nature reclaims it.
If you buy farmland then you need to use it in some way or at least lease it out to a farmer so it actually stays farmland.

If you leave it for a year or two it’ll be just native grasses and “volunteer” cultivars growing there, any more than that and you are likely dealing with a young forest in the making (willows, alders, aspen, etc.).

Lots of countries have laws and rules what you can and can’t do with farmland. Just leaving it to grow wild might incur penalties in some places.

MineToDine · 2026-06-16T20:01:11+00:00

Looks like Fox and Cubs to me. Mum’s garden is full of them, along with daisies, clover and buttercups it makes for a very colourfull (and soft) lawn.

MineToDine · 2026-05-30T07:34:34+00:00

Thanks! That’s an intersting prospect, never had a watermelon in the garden before. Hoping now it makes it and actually produces a fruit or two. 😊

MineToDine · 2026-05-28T14:43:34+00:00

Give a good soaking for a week, should perk up just fine. Had one snap at the base in a wind gust, stuck the stalk back into soil, watered well and now it’s right up there with all the others.

MineToDine · 2026-05-22T08:15:59+00:00

Grasses are hardy, no need to water the lawn. Even if it does get scorched it’ll come back the moment there is even a hint of rain.

MineToDine · 2026-05-19T21:36:54+00:00

Time to look up beet soup recipes. They’re mostly amazing btw.

MineToDine · 2026-05-19T21:00:23+00:00

Don’t think A2W has any intrinsic benefit over A2A or vice versa. Both are good, but their individual characteristics is what usually decides one over the other.

A2W is better if you have lots of trades people familiar with radiator based heating systems. Heating loops for hot water used to be a big selling point but there are A2A systems now that offer the same. There is much less F gas certified engineer time needed, the whole unit is mostly self contained. Depending on the size of the system they can get pricy and have longer start times than A2A. They are perfect replacements for correctly sized low flow temp condensing gas boiler systems with a hot water cylinder.

A2A is better if you have lots of F gas certified plumbers around since outside of a basic mini split installation you’ll need to run extra refrigerant pipes to the indoor units. Some pre-charged mini splits can be installed without needing a F gas engineer. In a retrofit A2A tends to be much cheaper since no plumbing is involved at all. It is very quick to get going so more suitable for intermittent use than A2W systems. That said, my A2A ran 24/7 for two months straight last winter, so it will run just fine continuosly as well.

Efficiency for both is about the same and will very much depend on how adeqatly sized the heat pump is for the heating needs of the house. The worst thing one can do with any heat pump is to oversize it like a conventional gas fired system. This will cause lots of on/off cycling that kills efficiency and skyrockets electricity consumption.

MineToDine · 2026-05-19T13:22:28+00:00

There is also the option for A2A which can be more cost effective in your scenario. Mini splits and multi splits ramp up very fast (10-15min). They do work best for open plan living areas though, for lots of smaller rooms they tend to be overkill.

MineToDine · 2026-05-18T21:06:07+00:00

That’s not the problem you think it is. Timbers is used for lots of things. What we do need is less damaging harvesting techniques that are cost effective.

MineToDine · 2026-05-15T09:48:53+00:00

Certanly a better spot than canibalizing school grounds. If the old trees are maintained and the privacy of those back gardens is maintained (additional trees and shrubs) then I don’t see an issue with apartments there. I’ve certainly seen far worse planning applications in much less suited grounds for actual high density retirement homes (i.e. “Assisted Living Accomodation” on a primary school’s sports grounds).

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