Archived from the Tools In Action forum (Around The House). This thread is read-only.
The front yard on my (new to me) house has concrete curbing around all the trees / bushes / rock mulch beds.
Those rock mulch beds have been cleaned as much as possible, but still didn’t have the desired appearance.
When I added my landscape lighting I buried the power wires in the grass / lawn, but just laid it across the rock mulch beds, for later burial.
The rock mulch bed at the house corner had a dead shrub that was removed. My plan was to clean up that bed and plant roses.
That rock mulch bed was dug 6″-8″ deep, with the dirt / weeds / rocks / roots sifted, separated and discarded as appropriate. The subterranean / black rocks were garden hose washed and reused. I ended up recovering eight 5 gallon buckets of rock mulch at this bed. Three buckets of this now-cleaned rock mulch were used at my flagpole.
Rose plants want good drainage, so I added and sifted in three bags of play sand into the clean soil.
All of my mulch beds get weed tarp, prior to adding the clean rock mulch.
When cleaning the rock mulch bed for one of my large palm trees I discovered LOTS of deep buried sea coral rocks mixed in the soil. When washing that coral I observed LOTS of milky white stuff leaching from the rocks, I’m guessing calcium. I’ve been digging out, separating that coral and not replacing it in the ground against the tree. It is over five gallons of buried coral just at that one tree.
Rose Mulch Bed – Before / Starting Cleaning Process
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Screen Sifting Rocks
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Subterranean Rocks Being Cleaned
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Rose Bed Soil Sifted
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Rose Bed Sifted Soil Initially Spread Out
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Rose Bed Sand Added
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Rose Bed Sand Mixed
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Rose Bed Mixed Soil Leveled
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Rose Bed Weed Tarp Stretched
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Roses Planted
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Rose Rock Mulch Added
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Roses Starting to Bloom
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Palm Tree Starting Point Rock Mulch
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Palm Tree Starting Rock Mulch Removal
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Palm Tree Deep Rock Removal
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Fitting Weed Tarp
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Looks great. The board with the rocks looks great.
wingless wrote:
On 7/1/2024 at 10:26 AM, wingless said:That rock mulch bed was dug 6″-8″ deep, with the dirt / weeds / rocks / roots sifted, separated and discarded as appropriate. The subterranean / black rocks were garden hose washed and reused. I ended up recovering eight 5 gallon buckets of rock mulch at this bed. Three buckets of this now-cleaned rock mulch were used at my flagpole.
Rose Mulch Bed – Before / Starting Cleaning Process
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Screen Sifting Rocks
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Subterranean Rocks Being Cleaned
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Eric – TIA wrote:
22 hours ago, Eric – TIA said:Looks great. The board with the rocks looks great.
Thanks much.
The screen box was designed, built and used by me for decades. It requires periodic disassembly for ½” chicken wire replacement, as the wire strands break.
This latest frame was built two years ago. I always use leftover / scrap wood. This time I purchased those nice large head screws, MUCH better for the periodic disassembly / reassembly required at screen replacement.
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Yes, I saw that and was wondering about that. I graded my backyard and there are a ton of rocks in there. I tried to pick up as many as I could then put top soil over but the rocks just keep coming back to the top. Do you just throw dirt, then grab the ends of the 2×4 and shake it?
VERY labor intensive.
Shovel in stuff, 2/3 full usually.
Grab onto vegetation, shake / pound until dirt falls off.
Wearing leather work gloves move contents up / down and right / left until mix of vegetation and rocks remain. Drag across screen to aid separation.
Pick out and separate rocks and vegetation. Rotate frame onto side and do same for stuff that fell through screen.
Cosmetic surface rock mulch is garden hose washed on driveway.
I KNEW I had created a topic showing sifting all the rocks, weeds, roots and different types of grass from my front yard.
Here is that topic. It is required to click the See More button to see everything.
Looks awesome. Yes I can see it be labor intensive but well worth it. I am still picking up rocks and will be for the next 20 years.