How to prepare an area for planting

I'm looking for some advice on how to prepare an area for planting. I have had to clear some land of its trees - about 9,000 sq ft - and now I need to prepare it for grass, shrubs and trees. I have removed about 45 trees - mostly white pine.

This land covered with poison ivy, and many other weeds. It is covered with a few inches of pine needles. If the pine needles are removed, I find some beautiful black soil.

My plan is to dig out all of the weeds, rake it, cover the land with clear plastic sheet, and let it bake for the months of July & August. This will hopefully kill all of the seeds & roots remaining in the soil. I will then have a landscaper come in September, remove the stumps, bury the pine needles, grade the land, add some topsoil, then I can plant, plant, and plant.

This is very time consuming and involves handling poison ivy. Also, I worry that mold may grow under the plastic sheeting.

Any better suggestions? And will I need to amend or work with the black soil that has been covered with the pine needles?

Thanks!

If it is important - I live in Massachusetts in the suburbs of Boston.

The black soil sounds great, I don't think you'll need to amend. I would maybe think twice about the plastic sheeting--sounds like you've got great soil under there, probably lots of microorganisms and worms and things like that, and if you put down the sheet, it may kill those off along with the weeds. Normally when people are clearing an area, the soil is bad and needs to be amended anyway so it's not bad to do the plastic and kill the weeds, but in your case I'd be worried about messing up the beautiful soil underneath.

If you till the soil at least 6 inches deep, you will probably expose & chop up all the weed seeds and roots. During the months you are waiting to plant, you can use a hoe to keep weeds out of the beds, and use a soil test kit to take soil samples and check to see if any amendments are necessary. This will depend on what you want to plant of course!

I would grind the stumps before the sitting/cleaning period, rake out the shavings too - they aren't a good soil amendment.

Oh yeah, forgot about that, he he!

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.

oops wrong pic above , that was lawn already there...let me try again.....sorry!

Thank you all for your responses.

I will definitely take your advice and not use the plastic. Who needs a gym? I will be hoeing and weeding on a regular basis! The good part is that I have all summer to do this. I can take it slowly. I can rent the tiller for the weekend, then just be very diligent about the weeds.

My town is under a water ban, so planting early is completely out of the question. If the ban is released, I will definitely think about planting the grass earlier than later.

Hi Sue, before you start to till the soil, please check what kind of weeds you have as many years ago I did what you are trying to achieve, the problems for me were that some of the weeds were perennials with tap roots, as I tilled, these got cut into pieces and next thing I knew, I had double the amount of weed because I had made like root cuttings from the cut up roots, would a flamegun/weed burner help you out, to just burn the tops off the weeds sometimes helps to clear your feet, then you can reburn when the perennials come through again, if plants dont get sun/light onto them, like burning the tops off, then they eventually die off at the roots, you would have to keep a hose pipe to hand as you burn as in youe hot conditions/climate, you dont want to start any forest fires, the ash from the burn off is also good for the soil, would the poison ivy not just regrow if it was cut and tilled into the soil, we dont have that over in UK, but have experienced it on visits to USA, it really is sooooo nasty and very carefull handling required I'm sure you know that anyway. good luck, hope you can end up with a real nice garden eventually. WeeNel.

I am still wondering if round up would not fix this problem? I mean it kills all vegetation, it should not effect the soil longterm and will stop the problem with tilling in those weeds and spreading them. Anyone have any reasons not to use a vegetation killer?

I dont use weedkillers myself as I hate the very thought of them, but do appreciate that in some conditions, there really is no alternative, best thing to do is try an area to see if it works as well as it says on the packet, I know sometimes the area has to have a second spraying done in about 2/3 months after, the mistake a lot of folks make is they dont give the weedkiller long enough to work it's way down to the tap roots and think it has'nt worked, I had a friend who said the weeds still grew after spraying, but she expected instant reactions, no they dont work like that, on some tender new seedlings it is just about instant, but perennial tap roots it needs time and sometimes more than one or two sprayings. Good luck anyway, dont envy your task, WeeNel.

roundup would kill but not the seeds.

the easiest and best method would be to burn it all off and then plant. for the tree stumps
i would just plant something to cover them up. maybe put bird bath or feeder or something on top? new hobby perhaps, wood carving? or plant new tree next to it?
the fire will kill a lot of the weed seeds, pine needles (of course you could rake and use for mulch).
if your city won't let you burn, just set it afire and wait until the neighbors call the fire dept and of course you could then be there with your shovel pretending like you are fighting the fire. but many times the fire dept needs something to burn for a training exercise and would be glad to do it for you. that's what they call a prairie burn. the grass regrows in no time and not a weed one.

I agree that burning is an excellent idea in the right environment. We often burnt fields on our farm but never at this time of the year. The fall or spring is really best. There is just too much dryness at this time of year. But if the fire dept. did it then...it may be your solution.

Here is a link to grass fire gone wrong:

http://www.nbc11.com/slideshow/13499177/detail.html?taf=bay