Forgot to mention that we live in Kensington, MD.

When do you plan on planting it? If it is next year, I would do a lasagna style bed on the hills. It save the back and wallet. Check out the Soil Forum for more information.

See if you can catch a crew, or a guy, mowing lawns and ask them. Check the want ads under 'services'. If your paper lists new business licences, maybe someone just getting started wouldn't think the job was too small.

Are you going to spread new topsoil?

Most of your decent soil will probably leave with the grass and weeds. It might be better to do the lasagna thing, or just cover the area with black plastic until everything dies. The remove the plastic before planting.

Hello:

I also live in Kensington, near Homewood Park.

One suggestion is to try to hire day laborers. I believe that there are some of these folks who wait for work in Wheaton, near the intersection of University & Veirs Mill. I have never done this, but my neighbor has. Speaking a bit of Spanish might be helpful.

If you need, I can contact my neighbor & get more details about how much it cost him to hire some help.

Cheers,

Dan

CASA of Maryland has an office on University Blvd just East of Flower Ave where you can hire day laborers for $10-$12/hr. This is more than mimimum wage, but CASA vets them to a certain extent and you can ask for specific skills (I ask for workers that speak English or French and who are willing to take orders from a woman -- not all will -- in addition to any particular skills I need that day). The office is open 7 AM - noon Mon-Fri, and workers often are available there freelance on weekends. It's negotiable whether you pay them for transit time (it's rare for them to have cars, so you'll need to bring your workers back to CASA at the end of the day) or lunch arrangements. I usually provide a range of soft drinks and cold water in addition to a simple lunch.

If you put the pulled-up weeds into black plastic bags with a cup or so of high-nitrogen fertilizer and a coffee-can's worth of topsoil, then seal them and sit them in the sun, the contents will ferment into decent compost in a few weeks. They'll get hot enough to cook most weed seeds. Easier than hauling them off somewhere, but doesn't work well for woody stuff.

Lynn