Rocks in garden

[peachguy]

For a couple since my family moved into a new house their has been rocks in the garden as ground cover. We got most of the out (mostly the larger stones) but there are still tiny and some larger stones left. Have any sugestions on how to separate them without having to pick each out by hand.

[Grey]

I have a similar problem. We have a gravel driveway, and the folks that put it in never put in a border to keep it from spreading - we have a very wide driveway now.

Anyway - I haven't come up with much as our soil is clay. If you are not in clay soil though, you could take a shovelful at a time and sift it through a screen to get the rocks out.

[grandpasrose]

That's what I would do - put it through a screen. Also, what I find works, is you will find that if you rake through the soil several times, the rocks seem to all come to the surface, and then I just rake them into a pile and pick them up.

Val

[peachguy]

thanks those are good ideas

[The Helpful Gardener]

Screening unit would work pretty well; I am guessing they are too small for a rock box (or the space is too small for a machine?)

HG

[my_secret_garden]

I was looking for just a suggestion like this! What a great idea... a sifter. I have a couple of areas in my yard that need rock removal and this will be a much easier than what I was going to do... which was pick them out by hand! Now where in the world am I going to find myself a sifter?

[Grey]

Yup - my hubby just built us a BIG sifter last night, after watching me pick rocks out of a garden bed all weekend. About 5 feet long by 2 feet wide. The length allows it to sit on the edges of a 4' wide garden bed.

I didn't know we HAD so many rocks!

Anyway, DH built it with a couple old 2x4s, then stapled some rabbit wire from the tractor supply to the bottom and - ta-da!

[strutta97]

Hi,

Boy, I know this will sound negative but ask any farmer: Aside from boulders, the little stones will always come to the surface. It's natural for the earth to heave stones upwards over time, especially in cold climates. They don't hurt a thing and, on the surface, help retain water in the soil.

Bryan

[grandpasrose]

I know around here, every spring, the farmers hire kids to go out in the fields and pick rocks. They never seem to end!

Val

[my_secret_garden]

I don't know what kind of rocks everyone else is trying to remove but I am trying to physically move landscaping rocks from one area of my yard to another. The previous owners of this house put these large landscaping rocks all along two sides of my fence and then closed it in with some wood posts and long stretches of 3x5s. I don't really understand why they did this. It was fine with me until I started cleaning up the yard and now I want to try to remove them and place them in other areas where I have rocks and then plant some things in this area and then will probably cover with mulch. I don't want to spend days picking the rocks out of the ground because there are a LOT of them. So, this idea will be perfect for me. My granddad sent over a sifter box for me to use so I am going to sift through shovelfulls of rocks and dirt and sift the dirt into a bucket to simply replace after the rocks are gone and moved to other areas. Sounded easier to me than picking all the rocks out by hand!

[Grey]

Yup.
Mine are those marble landscaping rocks. There was a poured driveway, I guess it started cracking, so they dumped rocks on it. Well, they didn't put anything at the SIDES of the drive to keep the rocks from spreading. So a simple driveway is now so wide, three cars can park side by side on it.

As we collect these rocks, they're going into our new patio. Nothing like a free patio, right?

I wish we found some big landscaping-type rocks as we go. I have uses for those!