Small Garden Advice For A Newbie

[geemacd]

have never owned a garden, I have only ever cut the grass in my parents garden so have no experience at all with these so here you guys can go nuts with your advice, design ideas etc, however remember cheap is very very good

I have a small garden at the back of my mid-terraced house with no access to the back garden other than through the house (with a narrow front door-way), currently it has a small patio area running the width of the house and 4 normal size paving stones in length away from the house, then there is a grass area same width of the house & approx 8 paving stones in length (if that makes sense) with a garden shed on part of it.

Grassed area is absolutely littered with moss and after getting combined grass feed, moss & week killer, there is now more black dirt patches than grass, but the grass that is remaining is growing okay so it seems.

Now I tried a fork in the soil on one section to see what it was like to try and improve the drainage a bit and went away for the weekend, came back and the fork marks are still there, so I am assuming there is a high clay content in the soil, so drainage is poor and thats why all the moss.

So what can I can short of digging down 5 feet to try improve the drainage ? Am I wasting what time I don't have with work and taking care of parents etc by trying to have a lawn or do I keep up the good fight ?

Give me ideas, advice, anything you can think of to help. I have no money to speak of at present and no way of doing large scale works to improve or change what I have. Garden shed & patio area has to stay, sun at end of day is at right hand side of house on the current patio area, garden gets approx 5/6hrs of sun at various points during the summer.

Doesnt leave you with much scope but I'm sure you will all have great ideas after reading some of these posts before I joined up.

Thanks in advance for your help

[opabinia51]

Here is a free and relatively easy way to improve the drainage. This fall, collect up all the leaves that fall in your yard and mow over them with the mower. Spread them over the areas that you want to garden on and then add a layer of greens like manure, seaweed, grass clippings and such. I try to do as many alternating layers as possible like this. Though, the general word on the street is that you shouldn't go higher than 6 inches, I did a foot last year and everything worked out fine.

Try to do as many layers as possible and use as wide a variety of greens as possible. This will give you the most nutrient rich soil that you can get.

Also, if you feel like the extra work, you can dig trenches in the existing soil and lay down layers or just leaves and then back fill and do the sheet comost (described above). Next year, you soil will be better, the year after it will be better still and the year after that, it will be amazing.

Even next year, when you plant seeds and plants in the soil, you will be amazed to see everything jump up and go nuts. It truly amazed me.

Oh and there is a thread called "Saving Water" or something to that tune in the organic forum.