[shefra]

Hello all, I have just become a member and would greatly appreciate advice on many topics. My home of five years is surrounded by ditches, ash trees, brambes ,nettles ,and rushes, underneath a crumbling stone wall. I have a type of lawn!!! which gets cut every couple of weeks. Also a neighbouring site is so overgrown with the above which are seeding into my 'patch'. Any advice as to how I can reclaim the original ditch wall, getting rid of the rushes, nettles and brambles without chemicals.
Shefira

[JennyS]

Hi Shefra
If you don't want to use chemicals the way I cleared brambles etc from my garden (which started life as a field) was cutting, pulling and digging .....
I cut down as much top growth as i could, then with fork, spade and pick axe dug and levered out all the roots I could get too......some will come back, but with much weaker growth and if you can keep at it you will manage to clear the most of it, though you'll get through a few pairs of strong gloves in the process!
Good luck with it all.......if I figure out how to put pictures in a post I'll do a 'before' and 'after' ...[
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Irish wildflowers

[shefra]

Thanks for the info Jenny S, a lot of hardgraft needed, I suppose I should have started sooner before they grew out of control. I was also thinking, with permission of site owner next door of getting someone to cut the field once a year to contain the rapid growth, and thereby prevent from seeding. By the way mine started out as a field too, and I am also surrounded by fields.

[GPI]

There was a recent post on a similar subject, shefra.
Have a look...
http://www.gardenplansireland.com/forum/about790.html

[shefra]

Thanks for that GPI, however I could not find that post, but I did log into a site called Allexperts.com and posted a thread , will let yu know when I get email.

[GPI]

[shefra]

Thats great, I think at this stage I will have to resort to Roundup, its just way out of control. Thanks