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Getting Rid of Shingle
purplegerbil
Posts: 45
Hi, i have started to level off my garden,so far removing 6.5 tonnes from the lawn area just to bring it level and intend to re-lay the lawn.
We have always had the odd pebble coming through the lawn which i usually find with the mower.
The soil is full of shingle so i intend to dig down 75-100mm and then top up with decent shingle free soil.
Will this be enough to prevent shingle rising through the soil or is there something else i need to be doing like adding a weed control fabric under the new soil.
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Posts
Bumping up the list in case there are any pebble movement experts out there.
bad soil put 6in of top soil on
Thanks for the replies, i'm kind of hoping i dont need to go down 6". I am only about a quarter of the way with it to a depth of about 4". Digging this kind of soil is heavy going !
Sounds like hard work but it could be worse - a couple of years ago we decided to finally get rid of the concrete that covered our garden. Previous owner clearly didn't like gardening and the entire 5m by 20m garden was covered with what turned out to be almost 12 inches of concrete (please ignore the mix of metric and imperial!). There was no rear access to the garden, the whole lot had to be drilled up and then carried through our house to the road out front. Ugh. But when the lawn went down and the beds were planted it was worth every minute of stress!
Sorry I can't offer any advice, I'm a hopeless amateur where gardening is concerned, but I hoped that you might get a wry chuckle out of pondering the looks on our faces as we started to wonder whether the previous owner had buried any bodies down there!
Hi Everyone
It took a bit of time and some effort but i did manage to get the old shingle laden soil removed.
I went down about six inches all over then laid a membrane and replaced the soil with the second grade topsoil available from my local turf supplier.
It has been left due to work commitments and whenever i get back to it the soil has set like concrete ! A few goes with a rake gets it back to a nice crumbly consistency. When set it has had loads of high spots so i filled in the dips with sand before raking it over which seems to have improved the quality of the soil and it now looks nice and level ready for me to turf.
The problem i now have is there are loads of stones on the surface, not the original shingle but a lot of small stones, pebbles, bits of broken glass and pottery. I guess the company i bought the soil from does'nt use a fine seive for this grade of soil.
I will probably leave the smaller stones but want to remove the larger ones. This is taking ages by hand, is there a type of rake i could use, a lawn rake for example ?
I think one of those plastic ones for raking leaves might do the job well enough. I created a new rear lawn last year - the whole area was that red gravel (
) but I incorporated most of it into the existing 'concrete' clay soil, and mixed more soil and compost with that to get decent drainage for our high rainfall. I used one of those rakes to remove big pieces when I was weary of using my hands!
You'll always get a few stones coming up until you have your turf or seed in place and the lawn's established though.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Thanks for the reply, i was thinking more along the lines of a metal one as i figure the wire is thin enough to collect the stones whilst allowing the soil to pass through leaving it roughly level