Forums Forums Enthusiast Forums A - Z Gardening is there anyone who can give gardening advice

Hi peeps, i need advice as to what to do with a bank in my garden[ not the money kind]. Its not the best soil its full of bricks and the more we dig the more bricks we get.All that seems to grow on it is weeds which we poision or dig out.
If there are any keen gardeners here on wiki who could give me any ideas as to the best way to do the bank to make it more maintainable, that would be great. SUE.

what do you mean by "do the bank" ?

You can have a real day of pleasure and fun by hiring one of those mini-diggers.

Seriously though, if the weeds are that repetitive a problem, systemic weedkill the whole bank and repeat after 4 weeks, it will be a bit messy but best to start from scratch, after that get a good hardy grass (if thats what you want), like that canadian mix. Don't get impatient with systemic weedkillers (like I do!!!), they do a lot of unseen damage sometimes, if second application is too soon it kill too much of the plant before killing all the roots.

Alternatively, get loads of cottage garden mixed seeds, cover the bank and watch the amazing display of colours as everthing battles it out - only proviso to this is to make some sort of break between the bank and the rest of your garden.

If there are particular hardy weeds that cause problems (mare's tail, bindweed) then rub them a bit to cause some open wounds and put some systemic on them and a plastic bag (with systemic in it) round them to feed the systemic to the plant.

Ground elder though is just a persistant nuisance, you can try the bag trick but if there are a lot of different root systems (usually because it has been dug up in the past) then it is a constatnt battle. Sometimes a steam cleaner can sterilise ground elder out, but my experience is that the route systems are at two levels, top level is easy to sort out, bottom level always wins.

What I call Sticky weed (actually stickywilly , catchweed, bedstraw, cleavers, goosegrass) is not a problem, just pull it up, it gets weak and gives up.

some advice as to what to do with the bank such as dd has given.

hmmmm, level it.

tried that but as i said the more we turn the soil over the more bricks we get, its just endless so we thought about leaving it and try to do the best we can with it, which is what advice we wanted.

DD has got it pretty right I think but........... be very careful that the bank is not being held together by the weeds you want to kill. You may well find that it will all move / land slide when there are no roots left to hold it together.

hmm, then i'd suggest more hard work, or the digger ! they are pretty good for jobs like that, skip hire aint cheap though

have you considered the wiki wirral dig team ??

now thats an great idea

Giant rockery?

ye but is there a tunnel









if not we could always make one

sorry sue hope someone can help you!

this is the bank in question