Beginner Gardening: How to prepare an area for planting, 0 by dovebydesign

dovebydesign wrote:
I agree, remove the stumps as far down as they can asap and then add some blood meal to that area where they grind 'em out, this just gives extra nitrogen to help any residual 'mulch'/wood chips decompose.

I would also not cover the area with plastic. I would till, as everyone said, and you can have a farmer or lawn guy come do the tilling to avoid backbreaking hours of work if u wanted to. Then as weeds emerge over the summer I would spot kill with round up or boiling water if you hate chemicals. Then in the fall have it raked, seeded and you should have a nice lawn next summer.

I have sewn a huge area lawn in July and was very successful with it. I did it because we were flipping an old farmhouse I fixed up and had to fix drainage problems around the house so I destroyed a large amount of back yard which I then tilled, raked and seeded. I just had to water all day and all night long for 5 weeks, but we had well water and so it was just a matter of moving sprinklers around constantly. I would not advise it. It was a pain in the toosh! I attached the only photo I have it was taken in August after about 5 weeks of watering it is 24/7.