My wife and I are planning to start an organic garden in our backyard of the house we bought recently. We are located in Abbotsford. Last week when we were ripped a small area of our lawn to prepare the soil for planting in about a month or two, we found lots of stones in the soil. Since we are planning to plant vegetables like tomatoes, greens, beans, peas etc we were wondering if this soil would help. We proceeded anyway by digging a trench a foot wide and about one foot and a half deep, filled with alternate layers of dried leaves and soil. We intend to use potting soil too later. Any ideas on helping to improve soil conditions would be appreciated.
small stones don't make much of a difference - unless there are a LOT of them. by that i mean to the point that they overrun the soil. the only time stones are a real issue is when you are growing root vegy's like carrot, potato, radish, etc. then you'd have to remove the stones.
Thanks for the response. There are quite a lot of stones but the soil is loose. We were just concened about the developement of roots of the vegetagble plants. As such we wouldn't plant any beets or tubers for in this area. On the other hand we thought of using a filter made with wire mesh to screen out the stones but that would be a time consuming process.
Unnatural alternating layers may slow drainage or cause other problems. You want a nice deep layer of good, not too stony soil of similar texture throughout. Water moving downward through soil backs up when it encounters material of a dramatically different texture. This is why shards/stones in the bottom of small containers do not improve drainage of the soil above.
