We decided to scarify the bottom third of our lawn yesterday, I know it's not strictly the best time of year for it but that part is in shade and was just a carpet of moss and bare soil so we decided what the hell. Anyway, as we went to aerate it today to reseed, the fork kept hitting something solid all the way across. When I looked more closely there was three quarters of a house brick just sticking out and then when I moved a bit of soil nearer the fence there was a full paving slab under there. What I thought was going to be a couple of hours work is going to have to turn into us digging up the whole area - I'm hoping not the whole lawn as it's not the smallest. I didn't dare poke at the bit we didn't scarify as I think I'd rather not know and the grass looks fairly healthy elsewhere. Do you ever get the feeling you wish you'd not bothered?
Dug up the garden for a pond a few years back. Unearthed enough stone - proper massive pieces of Yorkshire stone....bits of arches, a stone trough, all sorts of stuff - to build a new three-bedroom cottage* * this last bit not strictly true, but Mrs Finn now has all sorts of follies round the plot.
Was the grass growing ok before you dug it up? I’m so tempted to just leave it but there’s only about 2 inch of soil in some areas (with about 6 inch in others) and the fact it was all moss before tells me that it won’t regrow properly if I don’t dig it all out.
I had the same problem with a lawn for about 20 years or more. Just kept mowing the lawn/moss at the top. Every time I did cut the grass in summer I thought "must do something about that moss at the top of the lawn in the shade". Every time I finished cutting the grass I had a couple of beers on the patio and forgot all about it. Sold the house last year - problem gone away!
Tidied up a pile of rotting wood next to the veggie patch this summer and it was sat on some old carpet so I started to pull that up and about 8 square metres of lawn came up with it. Turns out the best bit of turf in the whole garden wasn't growing out of soil, just carpet. Stupid thing is, I put it down myself to kill an area off about 5 or 6 years ago and just forgot about it. Tried to put it back down but the ride-on mower snagged on it so I had to lift it and I'll need to reseed or make some beds instead. Or put some more carpet down...
You need to top dress and seed but not til September then do the same, scarifying, aerating , top dressing every September/ October til the end of your days. Just worry about what's on top and not what lies beneath.
You need to treat the most first, it will then go black and then you'll need to rake it all out. Once that's done I'd get a really decent grass seed that can grow in the shade to minimise it recurring.
Done all that we were just about to put seed down after giving the grass a good old poke when we discovered the problem.
Taking out the concrete to put in a lawn in a back garden in an old home, I once came across a fridge buried in the garden. Me and my mate spent hours to dig it out and skip it!
My missus just told me that our neighbour has a washing machine, or at least the drum, buried in his back garden to store his beetroot in. Maybe it was a similar idea.
hopefully a previous owner hasn't buried a dead cat or similar under the slabs.......someone I know had her parents ashes scattered in their back garden... could be anything under those slabs.........
Several years ago I started digging out for a pond in our garden in Germany where we were living at the time. I struck metal, and eventually discovered a freezer. It actually helped, as the space it occupied reduced the amount of digging I had to do. I contacted the people who sold us the house, and they agreed to collect it free of charge, as the alternative would be to answer tricky questions as to how it got there. Sadly, there was nothing edible in it...
If you'd asked me to do an archaeological dig in that part of your garden, I'd have claimed it was an Iron Age brick on top of a Bronze Age slab!
There weren't as many as we feared (we think, we gave up after a while as the fork went all the way down so if they are lower than that, they can stay there), we got 6 out in the end plus a bucket full of rubble.
It's all well and good doing all this work on your lawns - I did all the same things scarifying aerating re-seeding etc - had the lawn looking like a putting green............................................................. then the wife decides she wants a dog...................... bye bye putting green hello bald patch(es) to rival mine ....come to think of it I sometimes wonder if sometime in a drunken haze once upon a time someone has thought it funny to rub some 'stuff' on my head