All rocks and hardly any soil

paidinchickens

I am in a new build house. The garden is just full of compact rocks and stones and very little soil. I was thinking of getting a Rotavator but I don't think that will get through all the rocks either. The builders did their usual trick of getting a couple of inches of topsoil and turf to make the garden look green but their is probably no hope of ever growing any plants. Any suggestions?

J_J_Carter

Raised beds filled with top soil\compost mix or, bite the bullet, and get the the rubble cleared and replaced with topsoil. Depends on the size of garden and how long you plan to be there...

1 tonne bags of topsoil aren't that pricey (compared to tiny bags in the DIY sheds they want £5 for!)

londonsurrey

Depends on what you want to grow. I was just saying in another thread that flowers like poppies and Love-In-The-Mist love rocky poor soil.

blossomhill_2

I had similar in a new build on an ex-allotment site - I expected to inherit years of rich soil but the builders had sold that and replaced it with rubbish

Senecio, potentilla and icelandic poppies grew well

Or why not try a crevice garden with plants that need good drainage

Davesnave

An indication of garden size and your own interests would have been good, but no, a rotovator wouldn't solve anything.

You have a choice of landscaping and raising areas to fill with decent soil or, as someone else has said, going for it and doing some major replacement.

If you are into hard landscaping, then building quite high raised beds will enable you to 'lose' a lot of what you would replace, instead of it going to the tip (with a probable charge involved.)

angelavdavis

Lasagne gardening is for you! You can cheaply build up top soil using manure, grass clippings, newspaper, cardboard, etc and plant straight into it if needed. I did this for an allotment we took over in June 2010 which was rock hard and the beds are still the most fertile over a year later. I am now using this method to create raised borders, having previously imported top soil at great cost - only to find it of poor quality. There are guides on youtube and elsewhere on the net (also look at lasagna gardening).

AngelsMadv

With regards to building your garden up. If you don't mind the hard work, many people offer their top and sub soil on Freecycle. That's where we got it for out second "allotment" patch for our dads group behind a school. Was full of all sorts of stuff - old radiators, pipe, bricks. We dug it over, got most of stone out and poured 2 tonne of free topsoil on and 20 bags of free horse manure. Peas did great in it this year!

nancypearl

Thanks guys. Sorry for the double post. Should have done a better search. I did read about lasagne gardening. Alys Fowler has a video of it. My mum says I should build up the beds.