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Pete C. Pete C. is offline
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Default sand/clay from my yard - useful?


Nate Nagel wrote:

Hi again,

yesterday I started a project I'd been putting off for a while. To
explain, I guess I need to give some background - we bought this house
about a year and a half ago. The previous owners were very ecologically
minded and the entire yard is covered with inches of dark, rich
decomposed mulch- great stuff. About 20 years' worth, to be exact, and
the previous owners also planted some really great plants and flowers.
However, they apparently did not understand the concept of proper
grading - all around the house the grade level sloped in toward the
house. I graded the side yard last year when we had an A/C unit
installed, but the front still wasn't done. Yesterday I decided to
start on the south side of the front yard, because it was all infested
with chickweed anyway. I just shaved off the first inch or so and
tossed it on the compost pile and then started grading. I got down
another inch or two and hit the *original* "soil" which appears to be a
sand/clay mix. So what I ended up doing was moving the topsoil out of
the way, digging up some of the sand/clay and removing it, and then
putting the topsoil back, mixing it with a little of the sand/clay to
give it a little body. i figure that will make even better soil for
planting.

Question is, what do I do with the excess sand/clay that I removed? I
do have plans at some vague point in the future to put in some flagstone
walkways, can I just save this stuff for that? If the answer is
"maybe," how do I evaluate it to see whether it's suitable or not? If
it's not, how the hell do I get rid of it? I've had a hard enough time
getting rid of the "good stuff" where I've wanted to do so, I assume I'd
have to pay someone to haul off simple fill, but I don't know where to
start.


You probably don't have enough material for a "Free clean fill" sign to
work, but calling a few local landscapers might find one that needs a
small amount of fill for a project they're working on who would be
willing to pick it up.