Bad soil - do I remove it and start again or try to fix it?

So, I'm gearing up for a spring and summer campaign to bring my garden into order.

The first job I've done is to dig a test pit in the garden to see what I've got. It turns out it's awful.

The top soil seems to be made up almost entirely of stones and dust, along with lumps of plastic, vast amounts of broken glass ( how this got here I have no idea ) and some more stones. In some area's, years worth of pine needles are also present.

Further down, the sub soil is less stoney, but is much more clay heavy. It's not solid clay, but it's enough to be a pain.


So, I am wondering what I should do.

1) Fix it
I could take a riddle to it, get the worst of the stones out, add a vast amount of compost and manure, and then top dress every year for a good while, and then hope the worms do a good job...

Upsides - sense of satisfaction
- cheaper
- Alan Tictchmarsh would approve

Downsides - back breaking
- will take at least 2 years to show decent results
- probably means double digging, which makes me shudder in fear

or

2) Dig it out and fill the borders with ultra cheap compst from the local rubbish dump ( £2.50/ 100 litres but it's not the best stuff ).

Upsides - much quicker results
- much less effort
- Would have a legitimate reason to hire a BobCat digger, which look great fun

Downsides - Expensive
- Would need to hire skips, which is a pain in the bottom
- the Sprit of Geoff Hamilton would disapprove greatly and I would feel like a fraud ( although not sure why)


Any thoughts greatfully recieved. If anyone has a miracle method of getting stones out of soil without a riddle I would be indebted to you for life!

Thanks

Steve

<<edits - Title originally said s-c-r-a-p instead of remove, but word filter didn't like that and make it look like I was swearing in the title...>>

 

A couple of things, Rather than manually riddling it better to hire a soil screen in and 3 ton digger and sieve it on site, a turf grower or large plant hire firm could probably point you in the right direction.

Other option would be to s****e it off and replace with decent top soil, however rather than skips, use a grab Lorry this will work out farr cheaper.

The grab firm they may well be also be able to supply haul in fresh top soil and possibly for a few £s on the side roughly distribute it with the grab as well. If you go for buying in top soil then do it in bulk Lorry loads not bags.

 

I dug flower beds to create beds in a previous garden that had formerly been a wheat field and basically was just clay-good-for-bricks ...

I hired a JCB, dug out the beds (used the spoil to fill in a deep ditch that I piped instead), and filled with topsoil from the local bypass that was being built. Took the opportunity to put in some perforated-pipe land drains at the same time, and used the JCP to spread a juggernaut (I kid you not ...) load of mushroom compost over the whole lot. Grew a lovely shrubbery in double-quick time.

The soil here has been meadow for ever, but rough-mowed for 10 or 20 years, and all I've done is had it ploughed, rotavated, and then spreading muck-mulch on it each winter. Its only-good-for-bricks too, but the turf that has been ploughed in has helped, and the top spit is "ok"

 

Kristen,. any photographs of you operating the JCB?!!

 

"any photographs of you operating the JCB?!!"

Plenty of the JCB in my blog ... but its me taking the picture, so I can save you that shock!