Hi fellow gardeners, I'm re-landscaping my landlady's backyard and need some advice. I'm removing a lot of overgrown weedy / grassy areas and excavating pavers underneath (from my landlady's last gardening effort twenty-odd years ago) to create little patios. So far so good. I'd like to plant a small clover patch. In doing all this, I've accumulated quite a bit of soil that I've tried to filter out debris and dead plant matter from the soil itself. Can I use this soil as topsoil for my clover patch, or is it too "contaminated" with grass / weed seeds? If so, where can I get rid of this soil without paying to dump it? I'm hoping to complete this step as cheaply as possible. Any advice appreciated. Many thanks, Julien
One cheap thing you can do is to rake the soil out and cover it with about 4 layers of newspaper. Weight the paper down with rocks or bricks or something. This is like poor man's landscape fabric -- water will soak through, and eventually the paper will decompose, but meanwhile any seeds in the soil should germinate, and any residual plant matter like little pieces of roots (from which sometimes persistent species can reappear) should grow themselves to death. When you're ready to plant, you can either rake the decomposed paper into the soil or just sow the clover right on top and cover lightly with a thin layer of soil/compost/whatever.
Also if you have an old wire bed base prop on a stick and throw soil through with a shovel. Acts like a big sieve. I picked my bed up from a recycle heap. Liz
