Forum

Morning all.

To start, i am a DIYer and by no means an expert gardener.

I have cleared my garden following the completion of my house extension - stripped up the old patchy lawn, rotovated sub soil and imported 10 tonne of topsoil which i spread over the bank holiday weekend (depths vary from 25 - 100mm across approx 110m2). 

I started to do bit of a compacting with the heels of my boots but had to abandon due to the rain - it hasn't really stopped raining since!  The newly laid top soil is now water logged and there are puddles everywhere (mainly in those areas i've compacted and not re-raked). The garden rises towards the back fence so main water rentention in middle/front of garden.

I've attached a photo.  Weather forecast (in Birmingham) is looking good towards the end of this week with sun and dry spells which seem to contnue well into next week.  My question is what to do with the top soil in it's current form prior to me laying my turf?  What i believe i should do is wait until this weekend for the ground to dry out a bit, re-rotavate the whole area (with an electric tiller this time not the heavy duty petrol type), re-compact and rake over - leave for the week with a view to laying the turf next Friday (19th April).  I have pre turf fertiliser which i intended to rake into to soil too.

(Obvioulsy I also need to breakout & remove left over concrete from my shed slab - left over ready mix that the company wouldn't take away!)

Would apprecaite any advice please.

Thanks for reading

Peter.