A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2004 gravel in garden

I am going to use an additional garden plot this year but it adjoins an alley and the neighbor pushed snow (and gravel) onto it during the winter. Now, after the snow has melted, there is about an inch or inch and a half of gravel on top of the garden. The biggest stones are about an inch in diameter. I have tried to rake it off but lots of it remains. Do I have to get all of it off? Or can I till the rest into the soil w/o it doing any damage to veggies that I plant? The garden soil is mostly what we refer to here as "heavy" soil. I have never had this problem before. Thanks.

Hi Big Boy,

I have been thinking about this!!
If the rocks aren't that big,
I would think they would be fine???

When a growing medium has only one kind of
ingredient or consistancy, that is where you run into problems.
ie; if the dirt was to be all fine, sifted dirt,
beutiful to look at, and dig in............
but it would just compact down because there wouldn't be different things in the soil to give it "charactor" and allow for water to drain into the soil and oxygen to go into the soil for the roots, all this stuff needs them to be healthy.

IMHO, <img border="0" alt="[perplexed]" title="" src="graemlins/confused.gif" /> I believe the soil needs the rocks, some mind you, not a ba~zillion of them...............
to be able to keep all of those air ways and tunnels open and not completely compacted...
Does that make sense or did I confuse it more??

I think that as long as the rototiller doesn't "stop" because of the size of them,
I don't think there should be much problem with them. When planting, and there's some you feel too big, just push to the side.....

Hope this helps???????

Weezie

Thanks, Weezie. I'm more used to using bigger machinery to plant sweet corn, etc. which actually push small rocks aside when they emerge. I was worried about onions, radishes, and carrots, for example, that are so small. My suspicion was that "pushing the bigger ones aside" would be fine. I think I will just use my big garden tractor's rear tiller to incorporate the gravel and see what happens.

Some years ago I moved to a place that had a real nice garden spot; However, the last gardener had used regular gravel in the walkways, I had the same question, but with no one to "refer" to, I removed what I could and tilled her up, I came up with a ratio of about 2 handfulls of gravel per a 5 gal bucket of soil Had a great garden, but the soil was extremely fertile, so who can say....