You need to come and look at our garden. We have taken over 40 tons (and yes I mean tons) of that sort of material out of this garden. One thing you never do in my garden is plunge your hands into the soil gloveless. You never know what you are going to hit.
It has taken over 20 years to clear the worst of it. So you do have a little time to go at it.
Yup... several skips and grab lorry and still got this lot to shift! Every time I dig it gets chucked on here! We have more skips arriving in the coming months and we have to use buckets through the house to dump it.. but then it will be my veg garden... with RAISED beds lol! It feels so hard some days, but I really want a garden I love to be in, so it keeps me going! Once the soil is improved stuff grows, not thriving yet but a few more years of mulching and feeding should start to help!
Can I recommend a mattock, instead of a fork, for removing rocks, buried ironwork, wellies, old fire grates etc? Very effective and satisfying to use. Like this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/2OscNJ03TtmiPIsc_C4tmA I bent several digging forks in our previous garden (formerly a farmyard) before finding one of these.
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
The place I grew up was a 'reclaimed' three acre autoshop.. my parents had bought the place when I was a few months old, had all the junked cars towed away, and the top few inches of soil pushed back into a huge long pile along the back of the property. They then had 30 some dump truck loads of top soil brought in and planted it into horse pasture, orchards, and lawn. We had a huge veg garden, and every time my parents plowed it up my brother and I would look for 'treasures'. Melted glass, rusty bits of car parts, glass spark plugs, shards of shattered car window that looked like diamonds, little glass bottles, beer cans, and a range of other goodies. We even caught the plow on the corner of a buried car door once, and my brother and I spent an entire week trying to dig it from the ground. It was so deep, my dad just ended up covering it back over again.
It feels like it! My neighbour told me some of the previous owners buried everything from kitchen cabinets to windows! Then others built a rockery over it (can’t blame them lol!) and the one before us was a frail older lady who couldn’t do the garden, so everything grew into a thicket of shrubs and brambles. We had an extension so some of that rubble is from that, but the vast majority of it I have dug out! This should be the last digging phase... the rest is mostly hard landscaping/fencing and planting...🤗
Thanks Liriodendron ... unfortunately I can’t use a mattock at the moment as I’m recovering from a frozen shoulder so I can’t swing it properly... probably take my eye out lol!
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/2OscNJ03TtmiPIsc_C4tmA
I bent several digging forks in our previous garden (formerly a farmyard) before finding one of these.