Landscaping Front: Treating Soil

[Corey Batt]

Moved into our newly built house late last year and have finally got to the point of landscaping the yard. The builders in their processes were so kind as to leave the dirt filled with crushed quarry rubble, broken glass, plastic etc. The soil also seems to be leached at the level of 10cm deep (however the pics I have uploaded make it seem a bit more fertile as it was rained on the night before.

My question is: As I'm laying down a lawn in this area and possibly a garden bed, should I dig around 10cm of the top soil and replace it with something clean and suitable, perhaps potting mix? Or would potting mix not allow for grass growth very well. What would be suitable to replace this soil with?

I thought with the suprising amounts of farmers in this forum, I would be able to get some great advice in regards to this soil problem.

Pics of yard and soil in question:

 

[weg]

What you need is sandy loam (90% sand, 10% loam) to make up a 100mm surface.

Looks like you may need to remove and grade some of that existing surface.

 

[Graingrower]

There is no gaurantee that any soil you buy would be any better than that. Potting mix, besides being bloody expensive is too free draining to be any good. First thing I would do is rake out all the stones with a garden rake. If water beads on the surface, then you have a non-wetting (water phobic) soil and you need to add some clay. If you get taller as you walk across it when it's wet (eg: its bloody sticky), then you should add some gypsum. Get a pH test kit and if it's very acid then add some lime. In any case adding anything organic (manure, compost, etc) will be good for the soil. Add some fertiliser, mix it all in and sow some grass seed. Even where you want a garden bed having grass for a year or two will improve the soil. When you are ready to plant your garden, just spray the grass with glyphosate, put your plants in the dead sod and mulch well.

 

[Corey Batt]

Thanks for the replies.

Well I've gone about and done a PH test with the soil coming back quite Alkaline. I'll be treating this to bring it back to a more reasonable level and then will be landscaping. Might plonk some pics up when I'm done. Thanks for the help.

 

[our obsession]

CJ, not long done my last construction landscaping, (much like this, I did a double take on your pics, looked like my place!).

I hired a dingo excavator in for the weekend, scraped away some ofthesurface, am thinking your yard is like mine, not particularly large, small backyard, frontyard...so, scraped away the rubbish dirt, had a truck deliver loam, bordered up some beds, barkchipped, native plants there, other parts carted in cement wash, spread and leveled it, then stone over that, it's holding up excellent even with deluge of rain. Other parts of loam, chucked around the grass seed, it's up and growing..couple ofhundred bucks all up, and me on shovel duty. Oh, paversto the closeline of course. All done in one weekend. The crappy rubbish in your pics is whatmost of the area was for my IP grounds. What was scraped away I loaded in trailer and took home..it went on front gravel driveway out from farm to bitumen road, under new load of gravel, good base.

 

[Purple Patch]

All you need to know and so much more
http://forum.homeone.com.au/viewforum.php?f=19

Cheers
PP

 

[Corey Batt]

OO: Well I get the pleasure of shovel patrol from Thurs-Sunday.

Purchased cow manure, fertilizer and compost for the soil. Once levelled, stones removed and dug down sufficiently I'll be lining out a garden bed for a hedge along the drive way, and a garden bed on the fence line, with recycled timber/dark wood retainers. In the area infront of the bedroom window there is going to be a small deciduous tree.

Purple Patch: Excellent website, thanks for the link.

I'm trying to work out what type of tree to put infront of the window. Preferably growing to a max height of 2.5 or so metres, quite small. Flowering/deciduous would be great. Does anyone know of any good varieties? Personally I'd love a miniature Bradford Pear tree:
http://www.bhg.com/gardening/plant-dictionary/tree/bradford-pear/

 

[Corey Batt]

Bit of a thread resurrection but I've finished the front landscaping finally.

Pretty basic landscaping, all I wanted was clean lines and things to just look 'neat'. Lowish maintenance is also a plus!

Pics:

The lawn is a little worse for wear, destroyed it a bit whilst putting in the weeping mulberry and sleepers. I'll give it time to regrow and re-sow some of the bare areas.

In total it cost $419, which I'm happy with considering the tree alone cost around 25% of the garden.

Cost Breakdown:
$30 for lawn
$75 for manure, fertilizer, compost etc
$50 for bark (Too much as you can see the left overs on the driveway, also used a significant amount on the back yard).
$54 for sleepers
$50 for English box hedge
$110 for Weeping Mulberry
$50 for the assorted plants in garden bed

Now for the pergolas and shed at the back and the house will finally be finished. Found out today I get some free bobcat work tomorrow to help bring in some soil and level out my rear yard, as the building supervisor who is building several houses around us has been very thankful for us not getting annoyed about any 'disruptive noise' from them building etc.

I'm cool with that