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April 14, 2009
Backyard Soil Clean-up
My husband and I have zero experience with gardening and would love some advice from those of you who know more... This is our first spring with a backyard. The previous owners took the backyard from a neglected pile of rubbish to something kind of decent. They put a nice brick walkway around the outside of the garden and put in a fence. But, in the middle of this walkway, there is a rectangle of dirt filled with rocks and glass shards and cigarette butts and other assorted goodies. We'd ideally like to see grass in this area - something very kid friendly.
We've spent 3 weekends trying top pick through the soil and clean it up, but it there just always seems to be more junk in it. At this point we feel like we need some way to just get rid of all the dirt and bring in fresh soil. Does this sound like the solution? If so, how do we actually go about doing it logistically? What do we use to dig it out, how do dispose of the junky soil, where do we get fresh soil, and how do we get that to the backyard?
Comments
You can sift it but it's a lot of work & the soil might still be substandard. You don't say how big the patch is so it's hard to estimate how bulky what you will throw out will be - whether you can just keep putting out bags of household rubbish for a few weeks or if you need some kind of dumpster. But you're stuck w/ one aspect - putting down resin paper & carting the old stuff through the house & the new stuff back the other way. With any luck, you'll dig down about a foot & find that the soil is relatively debris-free. A good base is 2 to 3 feet & you should loosen up soil to that level before putting new soil on. (Some rocks at the 2-foot-plus level are good if the soil has a lot of clay - you need drainage.)
Posted by: Arkady at April 14, 2009 4:11 PM
If you have no experience as a gardener, you can jump right in and learn on the job (which means learning from both success and failure...the very nature of gardening), and/or buy a bunch of books, and/or speak with staff at good nurseries, and/or speak with friends who have more knowledge and skill than you. Another approach, which is the one I think best for beginners, is to start educating yourself through hands-on classes such as these: http://www.bbg.org/edu/adult/
http://www.bbg.org/edu/adult/#summertable
http://www.nybg.org/edu/conted/
Posted by: vinca at April 14, 2009 4:22 PM
I had a similar situation. I bought a house and there was just all this dirt in various places that was full of rocks, glass, bits of brick, etc. I felt like it was just too much to toss it out, so I stacked up some cinderblocks in a u shape and spread some wire mesh over that and started shoveling all the dirt on top. Then I scraped the dirt through the holes with a garden spade. Then whatever was left on top, I pushed into contractor buckets. For some reason this was highly enjoyable. In the end, I had several buckets of gravely material and a huge pile of sifted, "dead" dirt. With a shovel I mixed in composted manure, peat moss, pearlite and sand, creating really good garden soil. The gravel stuff I used to make drainage layers in the bottoms of all my plant containers. I`m sure there was some waste, but I really can`t remember any big deal, like maybe one bag. It was just a lot of work but I really liked it.
Posted by: sally at April 14, 2009 4:43 PM
"Then I scraped the dirt through the holes with a garden spade. Then whatever was left on top, I pushed into contractor buckets. For some reason this was highly enjoyable."
Sally, you can work in my garden any time, I won't even charge you :-)
Posted by: denton at April 14, 2009 4:54 PM
Yep, same problem. My yard had 4 cars in it that they worked on so there is years of motor oil along with layers of trash. I picked out 3 garbage bags, but I keep finding more layers of rubbish. I am very interested in how you decide to remedy this. I keep finding glass and don't want my toddler or even my dog to run around on it yet.
Posted by: bqe1970 at April 14, 2009 7:13 PM
If you have broken glass and crud in the soil, you will always have it unless you really dig down a foot and dump in new dirt. Trust me, 5 years later I know!
Just do some due dilegence, layer over a few inches of new soil, grow grass over it and you'll be fine. Our planted areas is where I still find a glass shards every time i go a hunting. But the grassed areas are fine. And it's not like a shard is going to work its way up and out into the grass and lie in wait for your toddler. Unless it's possessed by evil demons.
Posted by: MAT at April 14, 2009 8:05 PM
Thanks for all the ideas so far. To answer the question about size, the middle area of the yard that we're mostly concerned with is about 30'x60' - a pretty big area. Then the planter area around the outside perimeter also has the problem with junky soil, but I'm less concerned about that right now.
Posted by: ppwgall at April 14, 2009 8:22 PM
You might want to consider that there might be more than just trash and glass in that soil. People used to think nothing off disposing of household chemicals in their yards and that's without even taking into account lead particles.
If you are planning on gardening anything edible or having your children playing in the soil, I'd recommend having new soil brought in.
Posted by: FenFen at April 14, 2009 9:04 PM
you could also take a soil sample and bring it to a garden center to have it tested for chemicals AND to determine what balance your soil has and what you would need to make it healthy. - not sure if you have a car - but I LOVE Martin Viette nursery in Long Island - it's a gorgeous (a bit expensive) huge nursery that will do a soil sample right there as you wait for free and give you all sorts of tips.
We did our own garden from scratch that when we purchased the house had loads of crap,cement,wood,tools,glass. We just hauled in bags of topsoil and started to till and till and till away each season and it's really become a lovely garden. - we have grass that grows, plus healthy rose bushes,hydrangea,clematis,peaonies
last spring I finally noticed earth worms in the soil - which is a good indicator the soil is healthy
good luck!
Posted by: gemini10 at April 14, 2009 9:39 PM
I worked on the soil for ten years at my previous house, and now I'm starting over again at a new place. I think your experience is typical: every yard in Brooklyn has a hundred years of discarded stuff permeating the soil. I found keys, old hardware, doll heads, pottery, and piece after piece after piece of broken glass. (Contrary to what another poster said, I found that it actually does seem to work its way out of the ground--maybe it's the worms? don't know.) In one part of the yard, about a foot down, I found cobblestones. I found pieces of slate. I never replaced the soil; I just dug and sifted, composted and planted, and I had a terrific, lush garden.
Posted by: parkplaced at April 14, 2009 11:39 PM
When I moved into my house on Carroll St. the entire backyard was covered with cement. I had it broken up and removed thinking that I could go in the next day with a rototiller and begin planting. What I found instead was a nearly solid mass of glass going down at least five feet. I built sifters, got four day-laborers and between the five of us we sifted the soil and put everything into a dumpster. The soil was dead; I didn't see a single living thing in any of the piles. I brought in dozens of bags of topsoil, compost, leaves and anything else I thought could enrich the soil. Now, nine years later it is a lush garden with worms, birds, the various wildlife and beautiful plants and trees. It was a lot of work but once the first sifting had been done it became easier and more satisfying. You may want to consider sifting the soil since there is probably a lot of glass and other junk in that dirt.
Posted by: runes at April 15, 2009 7:56 AM
If you go the route of screening and sifting out the debris, you can dig a deeper hole and bury all of it as long as its glass, rocks, metal bits, etc and nothing harmful.
I had lots of new soil brought in and one of the other posters is right, you still keep finding bits of junk. Unless you have very young kids crawling around in it I wouldn't give it a second thought.
As we discussed a week ago in another thread, kids need to cut themselves and eat some dirt once in awhile in order to grow up normally and not become some PS brat. :)
Posted by: daveinbedstuy at April 15, 2009 8:32 AM
I am in the third year of attempting to de-rock and de-junk our back yard (which had been gravelled over, so it is just full of rocks). I bag everything and put it out with the garbage, but it is a slow and laborious process. Have found lovely chunks of bluestone, a cellar hatch door, bones, china, melted glass, rusty paint cans, many many bricks, layers of old cement paving, etc. For our vegetable patch we built an elevated area and filled it with all new soil, just to be sure we had good stuff. We also compost so that has helped renew the soil. Plants and trees are all doing well. It's the Japanese knot weed that is really a pain... though not as bad as I thought it would be. If you don't want to pay someone to do it, it will take you a while but it will be interesting and you'll feek that much better about it!
Posted by: mshook at April 15, 2009 8:49 AM
If you have a lot of soil to sift, I highly recommend building one of these.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Trommel-Compost-Sifter/
We build one to sift compost in our community garden, and it's incredibly efficient. Works great on removing rocks and debris from soil too.
Posted by: arches at April 15, 2009 12:18 PM
We starting digging a small section this morning to see how deep we'd have to go to get some clean soil. We discovered a plastic liner/tarp covering the ground after going only about a foot down. Any idea why there might be a liner under our junky soil? It also might explain our poor drainage in the yard.
Posted by: ppwgall at April 16, 2009 5:42 PM
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