Discussions

Hello!  
My large backyard currently consists of gravel and a poured asphalt path. We are looking to do some landscaping ourselves next summer with the help of friends and family. We are planning to lay top soil and seed it as well as creating a stone patio for our firepit.  
We currently have an excess amount of weeds in our backyard so my husband thinks we should put something under the topsoil to prohibit the growth. We were thinking clay?  
Does anyone have any ideas as to what we could do or use? Any suggestions at all?  
We really don't need any fancy landscaping so we were hoping to avoid hiring someone but if we need to hire to do a base layer we will.  
 
We also live outside of Brandon (Rivers) and were looking for a company that would deliver a large amount of soil. Any recommendations would be wonderful!

Top soil on top of the gravel, which the weeds have grown through after about 10 years of no backyard maintenance.  
 
Wondering if there is any way to put a base layer down on top of the gravel to prevent a weed infestation in any new grass that we would be seeding the top soil. And whether this is something we can do ourselves or if we are better off hiring someone to do it.

putting clay below your new topsoil wont prevent any weeds at all from coming through and will most likely double or triplpe your efforts and may leave your yard higher then you want due to adding layer on layer of various soils. If you are concerned about the existing weeds pushing up through your new layer of topsoil I would say just simply spray them with roundup advanced (not a controlled chemical) to kill them prior to laying down the new topsoil. Any topsoil you buy from anywhere (except the bagged topsoil from the store) will have vast amount of weed seeds in it, you will either have to hand pick out your weeds or spray them with a broad leaf weed killer. My personal preference for cost, time, effort, water usage etc... I 100% recommend sod. Sod will not only save you alot of effort the first month but will also keep those weeds down, when you lay down sod you might get a few weeds poking through between the rolls but you will NOT get weeds pushing up through the rolls themselves, If you are highly considering seed I would recommend adding up your costs for properly installing topsoil and seed and compare, you might be surprised at how cheap sod is, and its thick and green and weed free from day 1.

Sod is the way to go. By the time you seed, fertilize, water water water, reseed, water water, reseed, and water, you likely would have been better off sodding.  
 
If you really don’t want to do sod, then look into hydroseeding.  
 
Even with sod though you still need 4-6 inches of topsoil.  
 
Spraying the weeds first is good advice, but how much grade do you have to work with? Are you sure you don’t need to scrape out a few inches of the gravel to make room for topsoil? This would also help with the established weeds.

I would be getting rid of the gravel then add top soil and then lay sod.

I really disagree with that statement.. your comparing thousands of dollars of Sod in comparison to buying seed, fertilizer and your water bill? We just recently built our home in the South end of town and we live on a corner lot with a lot of yard. We decided that it was cheaper to seed! Our grass not only looks better then most because of the fertilizer but it's more thicker.. Doing projects yourself can cost less, but be prepared to put your time into it.  
 
We made a center piece in our front yard with rock and tree's, we laid down a mesh material overtop of the topsoil, hardly any weeds came up after.  
 
Good luck!

I highly second sod it is a fare bit more but it's also alot less work, I just added top soil around my house to grade it and I seeded it and it was very tedious and actually cost me about 2/3 times the price of sod anyways. Both take lots of water but with sod you have grass now and it's almost a guaranteed grow, where grass seed you have to keep putting down seed and sometimes it dosent grow. I bought a top expensive brand guranteed results in 7 days and 3 weeks later nothing I got another top expensive brand also guranteed results in 7 days and it took 3 weeks and about half to 3/4s grew so I had to contiously add grass seed and water. I also had manure mixed in with my top soil and I used a starting fertalizer. But either way you got one key thing and that is water. However as mentioned hydro seed i dont know how expensive that is but i heard it's amazing 2 weeks full healthy grass and no work to you besides your top soil.

Practically no seed will germinate in 7 days lol. Even those Scotts bag claims are not true. Depending on the mix you use likely take minimum 10-14 days. Some KBG takes up to 21 or more to germinate. It's not hard to seed a lawn if you know what you are doing and put in the effort. Just because you lay sod isn't a guarantee. If you don't water the heck out of it until it establishes it's roots it will die too.  
 
As far as hydro seed goes.... Save your money.