Stoney soil for new lawn

mattgarden · February 2018

Hi all,

Desperate for some help and advice.

I've been working hard, trying to turn the low maintenance, stoney, concrete garden into a new lawn.

I'm at the point where I'm down to be soil in vast areas, having removed the stone or paving. The soil is mega stoney. Ive tried to rake it out buts it's never ending. As soon as I do a patch, I rake it level and unveil more stone.

I've spent days sieving the soil on my little riddle but only manage around 8 square metres a day. The garden is near 200 square metres. I've read on here in other threads to make sure the soil is stone free for 15cm. So I'm trying to adhere to that.

I am desperate to make the ground as perfect as possible to seed the lawn hence my thorough sieving but I feel I cannot spend so much time doing it with my 40cm riddle. Shaking at manually.

Are there any clever ways to do it to speed it up? I've seen a soil siever at screwfix. But at 400 quid ish it's far too expensive. I was thinking could a old washing machine drum be fashioned in to some sort of rotary sieve?

I would love to knock something up diy, if easy enough and would be time effective in the long run.

Thank you

B3 · June 2017

What's the smallest stones to get through your riddler? Are you trying to achieve a very fine soil?

Very small stones wouldn't be a problem so long as there's not too many.

mattgarden · June 2017

It's a 12mm riddle I think. There are some that fall through... If they are on the surface, will grass grow?

B3 · June 2017

I'm no lawn expert but there are plenty in the forum. It just sounded to me as if you might be overdoing the sifting.

I'm sure you'll get an answer soon.

mattgarden · June 2017

Thanks. I hope you are right and I can relax with it a bit. Its just there is lots of stone, I have a theory that it is old hardcore that's been dug in with the soil

B3 · June 2017

Oh dear. That sounds like a lot of hard work. Good luck with it

Fairygirl · June 2017

I wouldn't worry if shingle at 10mm is falling through your sieve. I had bigger gravel than that in the area I made into grass two years ago. A good layer of topsoil with grass seed sown and it's fine. I wanted a lot of gravel for drainage because of the amount of rain we get all year round, and yes, there was a bit of it on top which is why I let it settle in the weather for a couple of weeks before doing the final topsoil/compost and seed. It's a big area to be spending so much time at sieving everything.

If you want a bowling green, that's entirely different. If you want grass that you can make into a servieable tidy lawn, it should be fine. Unless you get a giant digger in to remove everything down to a couple of feet, there has to be a compromise Matt

mattgarden · June 2017

Thank you for such a detailed response Fairy girl. Should I be concerned that some areas appear to be less stoney than others? Will the grass grow differently?

You mention topsoil and compost.... I was hopeful that I wouldn't need to add to the soil that is already there and maybe fertilise rather than add organic material. Would you advise against this knowing that the ground is a little stoney? And if so, how much should I add? Thank you.

I'll try to get out to take a photo of the soil a little later if that helps?

Fairygirl · June 2017

If you have a reasonable amount of soil compared with gravel - you won't need much then. I was recovering an area that had been under gravel and slabs, and we have heavy clay, so it was necessary for me to pay a bit more attention to the medium the seed would have to grow in. You'll probably only need a little layer of soil to sift over it to give the the seed a nice even layer to grow into. If you think it's not necessary, then just sow direct, but make sure the seed has good contact with the soil.

It's normal to put a bit of fertiliser down a week or so before seeding as well. I just used some bonemeal.

Mine looked like that about a month after sowing in mid June (2015) - lots of rain helped!

mattgarden · June 2017

Wow that looks amazing. So did you sow the seeds in May? That's great.

So the area I tried to rake yesterday looked like this this morning :

I think the rain pushed the soil down.

A quick rake got it back to this :

How does that look?

This is what I'm working with:

Fairygirl · June 2017

Yes - the rain will settle the soil and expose any stones Matt. That's kind of the problem.....

I think at some point, you have to accept you'll have stones. You can only take away so many. If you get it to the best state you can, then add some topsoil before seeding, I think that's the best you can do. As I mentioned before - the alternative is to get a digger in and remove everything to depth of a foot or two and then replace all the soil. Not really viable though is it?

Mine was done almost exactly two years ago and pretty much looked like your last pic. I added a bit of soil befoer sowing the seed. Sown in June and that pic was late July. I gave it it's first cut at that stage. I wouldn't really recommend doing it at that time of year, but with our level of rainfall, it wasn't too big a risk. Mine is only about 20 sq metres anyway.

It still looks good, but I feed it a couple of times through the year. Ironically, we've had the driest spring on record up here, but I've resisted the temptation to water it - goes against the grain when you live in the west of Scotland!

Stoney soil for new lawn

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