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What is a soil screener?
Many people with stony and sandy soil just buy a ton of topsoil chuck it on their flower beds, add fertilizer and hope for the best. Nature is pretty good if you give her the tools; add compost to your garden, keep turning it over and, using the lie fallow approach of farmers, you will eventually get good soil. However, even nature cannot remove stones. For those of you who truly want to improve their garden soil, get a soil screener, effectively like a giant sieve you put your bad mixed up stony soil in the top, it goes through the 10mm screen and good, fine, plant-friendly soil comes out of the bottom of the soil screener. Depending on how much soil you have to screen you can construct a homemade soil screener or go buy a larger one, or even hire an industrial style screener.
Types of soil screener
If you have a small plot to screen, maybe some stony ground you have tilled and want to make into a vegetable plot, you can make a soil screener. If you are any good at rudimentary mechanics you can construct a rotary drum, which is driven by a motor and mounted on a trailer. For inspiration have a look at YouTube videos. Essentially you need two chutes for your soil, one for the good soil to come out and one for the rubble, and you need to collect both, so wheelbarrows are required at the very leas.t You can find a soil screener for sale at around $300 that you assemble yourself, fit onto a conventional barrow cement mixer, and which you can disassemble afterwards for easy storage. A large project may need a soil screener attached to a trailer to ease transport. Unless you are going to be dealing with a large plot regularly, or are a landscape gardener by profession, it may be an idea to hire this type of soil screener.
Questions to consider before buying a soil screener
The size of plot you are screening determines the size and type of the soil screener and a portable soil screener that fits on wheelbarrows may be quite enough to do the job. How far from the house is the plot on which you are working? Transporting the rubbish after screening could need a trailer. How bad is the site? A site filled with rubble will need an industrial strength soil screener to deal with the weight of the rubble, consider hiring one. Once your soil is screened, you have lovely soil and can see truly how much more topsoil, if any, that you need to buy.
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Author Bio Box: Patricia Wainwright
Get all the facts about soil and fertilizer management and organic gardening at GreenThumbArticles.com!
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