Terrible soil conditions - help needed!
Dave Morgans
Posts: 3
We've recently done a lot of work in our garden including removing numerous old unsafe trees, a pond greenhouse etc. We've laid a patio and build a retaining wall. Unfortunately all this work has only added to the poor soil we started with. Theres only maybe 6 inches on soil ontop of chalk, (Brighton nr the sea) and what soil there is is full of stones and heavily compacted. I hired a rotavator and raked a load of the stones into the center of the garden, which had the unintentional result of stopping all the building materials from the wall spreading everywhere!
What i would like some advice on is how to prepare my 'garden' to turf it. I've got a rotary sieve so was thinking about hiring a rotavotor again, raking into piles, sieving, then rotavating more soil in to whats left? Being a complete novice any advice would be appreciated. The area to turf is about 100 m2
Posts
You have to live with what you've got. Taking out all the stones will lead to the soil sinking and becoming even more compacted. The best thing is to add body to the soil by adding compost, bought in in your case. You can buy in bulk from your local authority (ton bags if your'e lucky). Add this to the soil, then you can think about seeding or turfing. It's a lot of compost but it's your only option.
Thank you for the reply, I hadn't thought removing the stones would cause even more problems! Would you rotovate in the compost?
If your refering to the name, no.