How to Remove Rocks from Yard Soil? Steps and Guide

Rocky yard soil greatly impedes the growth of your garden or flower beds. Read this post to find out different methods to remove rocks from yard soil.

Most homeowners love the idea of a beautiful flower bed or a plush garden in their front yard. The natural, lush greenery, coupled with the radiant and colorful flowers, looks absolutely spectacular.

However, it is possible that as you work up your yard to prepare it for the next blooming season, you find rocks in your yard soil.

Rocky soil can create many problems in your garden, such as hindering the growth of deep-rooted plants and damaging your gardening equipment.

They can also become a hazard and can easily hurt someone. Therefore, it’s in your best interest to remove these sporadic rocks from the soil in your yard before they completely ruin your garden and flower beds.

Making your yard soil rock-free is certainly a tedious task, especially when done by hand, but you should know that to have a healthy garden, you must separate the dirt from the rocks.

There are many different tools and gardening equipment that can speed up the process and successfully clear out your yard.

Here is an easy guide to help you revamp your front yard and get it ready for the next season.

Step 1: Tools and Supplies

To begin with, there are a few essential gardening tools and supplies that you will need in order to remove rocks from the yard soil.

These include:

1.     Garden Rake

Also known as a ‘bow rake,’ this tool is shaped like a broom with short but strong and sturdy tines that are parallel to each other. It is mainly used to rake up the rocks from the yard soil.

2.     Rototiller

This is a motorized machine that comes with two sets of rotating tines. Its main purpose is to dig up the soil in the yard.

3.     Work Gloves

When using a garden rake, you need to wear a pair of good-quality gardening gloves because the process of raking can cause nasty blisters on your hands.

4.     Pick

This is a hand tool with a stout head and a long handle and is used to remove large-sized rocks from the soil.

5.     Scoop Shovel

This is yet another hand tool with a curved container that is used for scooping or lifting loose soil.

6.     Bucket or Wheelbarrow

Once you’ve collected the rocks from the soil, you will need a bucket or a wheelbarrow to carry them and dispose of them elsewhere.

Step 2: Tilling

In other words, this refers to digging up a particular area of your garden in order to loosen the soil and break it apart.

Use the Rototiller to dig at least six to eight inches deep in the yard soil. The main purpose of tilling is to separate the dirt from the rocks so that all the rocks hiding within the soil come up to the surface.

Step 3: Break Up Large Rocks

In case you come up across large rocks while digging, use a pick to break them up so that it is easier to collect and remove them along with the other rocks.

Step 4: Raking

Once you have all the rocks on the surface of your yard, it is time to gather them into a pile with the help of the landscape rake. It’s exactly like how you collect the fallen leaves in your yard with the help of a leaf rake.

Step 4: Scooping

Now that you have all the rocks collected in a pile, use a shovel to scoop them up and move them to the designated area.

Step 5: Transport the Rocks

With the help of the shovel, pile up all the rocks into a bucket or a wheelbarrow to transport them out of the yard.

Other Optional Method

In case you don’t own a Rototiller and the other gardening tools mentioned above, you can even clear out your yard manually just by using your hands.

You will need the following supplies to remove rocks from your yard soil by hand:

• Shovel
• Bucket or any container
• A separator screen or net

Steps to Follow

1. The first thing you need to do is locate the area where you have rocks in the soil and then divide it with the help of a separator screen or net.
2. Dig up a few inches with the help of your shovel and scoop up all the dirt and soil in the shovel plate.
3. Empty the shovel plate into a bucket or any other similar container and repeat the process till you have dug up a few inches.
4. If you come across medium to large-sized rocks, it is ideal to hand-pick them to save time and energy.
5. Scoop all the rocks into the container and smooth out the soil once you have successfully removed all the rocks.

Both these methods may sound tiring and dreary, but once you successfully remove the rocks from your yard soil, you will have a beautiful, healthy landscape in no time!