Lawn needs rescuing!

[Dillie]

My lawn is in a right state! Possibly need to dig it up and start again!

Can I avoid this? For one I am a totally useless gardener, and can only seem to grow weeds successfully and also I have less than 3 inches of top soil before you dig down to some yucky stoney grey sticky clay type stuff.

The lawn looks very mossy (sp?) and grass is growing ok in places but is pretty much non-existant in others.

At what time is best to start to try to bring my lawn back to life? It was negleted last year, as I put my back out and my DH really cbh with the garden!!

Any tips? should I scarify the lawn and reseed? Are those lawn feed & weeds any good? I need it done to the cheapest possible so cant spend a fortune on new turf

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Bumping as I have the same problem: anyone?

I'm currently trying go salvage our horrible lawn.It is on clay too,and I'm also trying to level and reseed a huge area where a pond used to be.I have bought a load of topsoil and covered all the poor bits over with it,to a dept of about 4 cm.So far it has take 120 litres to cover an area of about 4ft x 4ft though!

Once it is level [ish]I'm going to reseed it with a tough hardwearing lawnseed.

If the ground is not too wet underfoot then hire a scarifyer for the weekend and give the lawn a good going over firstly one direction and then the other.

It will look awful once this has been done but don't worry.
Fill any dips in with sharp sand and topsoil.

Rake over the area for any missed bits then top dress with a good lawn weed and feed mix.

Once the weather is a little warmer then scatter a good quality grass seed and feed over the lawn. Water well and keep from walking on it.

The lawn might look a bit pathetic at this stage but will soon thicken up.

Once the new grass begins to grow, set the mower to the highest setting so as the tops of the grass get cut. As the grass establishes, you can do a lower cut.