hello everyone, thanks in advance for any helpful ideas you might have.
so the short version of my sad story. bought a house in 2009...in january...in canada. I was shown pictures of what the garden/lawn 'looks like' in the summer. turns out those were from YEARS ago. the old lady that owned the place previously was a gardening nut and did a great job from what neighbors tells me. well she died, house went into estate and nobody touched it.
needless to say I've got a colossal mess. I am not someone that has any skill or like for gardening. working on cars or building things is more up my alley. but I do want to sell my house in the next few years and I recognize one thing: lawns sell, a pile of garbage doesn't.
I have weeds, vines, random plants and flowers, raspberries, you name it I probably have it. I just don't have much grass at this point.
here's where it gets real fun: if possible I would like to avoid using chemicals. I will consider it as a last resort only. living in ontario, I'm also very restricted on what herbicides I can get legally anyways. the ones I can get without going over the border don't work.
things I have tried: putting down tarps to kill and then reseed. that was partially successful. it doesn't kill everything - many weeds just push through the tarp! yes I put junk on the tarps, cinter blocks and scarp wood actually. I've tried digging patches out and seeding as well. the weeds grow in faster than the grass grows and last attempt ended up being worse than when I started.
its gotten to the point where I can't keep up with it. I work 12 hour rotating shifts so I can't just pick away at it after work each day. I'm kinda limited in what I can do here. certainly not afraid of some hard work though, I just need a way to do this in patches and push the weeds out.
any ideas I'm wide open here. I don't need a perfect lawn nor do I want one. I just need this to look reasonable enough to sell the property in a couple years from now.
thanks.