No hammock for him! He's got so many projects going that it's impossible to squeeze in another one. He's an awesome husband. I can't even get him to go fishing, and that was the main reason we moved to this part of Idaho!

No no no no no no! You don't understand! You must have missed out on DH Training 101. Whatever is wrong, it's all his fault. If there are rocks where you want flowers, it's all his fault. And it's his responsibility to take care of it (assuming you have made him feel thoroughly guilty by vainly and heroically trying to deal with it yourself.. ) Sheesh, I can see I can't let you anywhere near my sweetie! (He's well trained! )

Well, I tried making him feel guilty. That may be his one and only fault. He doesn't feel guilty about me practically killing myself over those rocks! I've probably used the guilt thing a few too many times though, so I'll have to back off on that for a while. A very short while!

He's still in training though. Hopefully after 50 years, I will have made some progress!

Seriously, tho, if you just want to get a few individual plants in, what I did was use my ever-so-nifty garden trowel to find the rocks and sort of pry on them a bit, then used the cultivator to rake the dirt away from the rocks so I could see how big they were. Most of what I was dealing with were rocks less than about 8" across and most less than that. Then I'd use my short shovel to clear the dirt out of the hole. Wasn't all that physically taxing, but it was surely time consuming! But I was bound and determined to get those roses in!
Heh, I used a variation on that same technique for this little puppy in a different situation (doggie--Great Pyr---is there for scale. ):

I think it's a case of "the right tool for the job". Shovels are fine for moving or turning soil, but not so good for rocks.

I was lucky to be living in a place with some abandoned sheds, so I poked around and found an abandoned pick-head, rusty and ancient. I out a wood handle on it and the rust came right off as I used it!

The pointy end does a great job if you hit right between 2-3 rocks, then use it as a lever. The weight sure does make it hard to lift and swing, but when it hits, those rocks do MOVE.

The fatter end is good for clay that's at least a little softer than rocks. It still sinks in, but when you lever it, you break free a wider swath of clay, or clay and gravel.

shovels for soil
picks for rocky soil
mattocks for soil + roots

Trying to use a pick when there are tough, tangled roots is almost impossible. Roots can be tougher than rocks to lever out, and somehow they grab the pick and pull back! I have to bend over and pull the pick out straight. You NEED a mattock to cut tough roots.

When I dig out the below-grade foundation of a raised / sunken bed, sometimes it's a three-step process.

1. Use the pick to break up what I can, levering out rocks and breaking the clay/rock mix.
Use the pick to expose the root layer.

2. Use the mattock to cut the roots. When i start to hit more rocks, trade the mattock back for the pick, to pry the rocks away from the roots. Use the mattock to cut more roots and expose more rocks.

3. Step three is ongoing as I use pick and mattock to break things loose. I use a hoe or steel rake to pull loose chunks away from the work area and make a pile big enough to be worth shoveling into a wheelbarrow.

P.S. Once you dig below grade in impervious soil, you need to assure drainage, or the hole will become a mud wallow or pool. I use both ends of the pick, and usually the mattock blade, to cut a narrow slit trench down from the lowest point of the bed's foundation to a some point that is even lower.

My caly is hard enoguh that I don't even have to back-fill the slit trench with gravel or drainage pipe. The walls are like concrete. Of course, if you step into it wrong, it's an ankle-breaker.

It's probably smarter to just ignore soil this bad, treat it as bare rock or concrete,and just build up raised beds with purchased soil or soil that's 60-80% amendments. But "cultivating the soil" is my favorite part of gardening, so I found the tools I needed. Most of my beds go down as well as up.

Oh, geez, Rick! I never even thought of using my pick! I have a small, short handled one (good for using in small areas and sitting down! ) that should work well for digging the holes to plant my new clems!

I've got a good pick. I'll save it for when I'm sentenced to hard labor.

Tjhey are great for rocky soil. try it, you might like it!

P.S. I spent two years using a pick on straight clay "because it was so hard". DUHH! Spray a little water on it the day before or a few hours before, and it SOFTENS!

It sure is hard work.

It's the soil part of rocky soil that seems to be mostly missing. It would be more like busting up rocks!

Can you put a steel post into the ground there? If you can, you don't know about rocks! The only way to build fences where we used to live in OR was to build these above-ground structures called "rock jacks." You couldn't dig holes, you couldn't pound in steel fence posts. We had a friend with an auger attachment for his tractor.....still couldn't dig holes. Those were some SERIOUS rocks!

woofie said:Hey, what about one of those garden forks? Thing that kind of looks like a pitchfork, but shorter and with heavier tines?

That's what I have to use in an area in my yard that has a minimum of 4 different layers of rock in it between layers of dirt.. and only within the first 12 inches!!! The landscapers previous to me had put down river rock, then dirt was on top, then small (1/4-1/2") Colorado Red rock, then more dirt, then bigger Red rock, then more dirt, then pea gravel, then more dirt!! WTH!! So I just use my "spaghetti fork" to make the hole after soaking that area in water for about 2 hours the day previously. http://www.lowes.com/pd_71726-...

No getting a fence post into the ground where I want to dig, and eventually put fence posts. It's not that it's solid slabs of rock. Just LOTS of rocks. They aren't big rocks for the most part, but there are lots of them. Haven't gotten down more than 4 inches by removing them by hand, so I don't know how deep they are.

Eeek! Sounds like your ground is somewhere between what we have here and what we had down in OR. There, the only way I could grow anything was to build raised beds (no borders, just built up mounds on the ground). Good luck with it! Maybe you can hire some cheap, young, local talent (HS kids can be useful at times! ) with more back than brains?

I'm sure that there must be areas here where the rocks aren't so bad. I just have to find those areas. The veggie garden has no rocks, and I tilled it pretty deep. The 3 or so acres of lawn area doesn't seem to have them either. It was probably and alfalfa or hay field at some point, so maybe someone got most of the rocks out before planting the crops, and then dumped them in the area that I want to plant! Oh well, I'll figure something out eventually.

The high school kids here are so nice, and I'm sure I can round some up if needed!

Sigh, I miss the kid who used to help us, before he graduated and got a good job. Both back AND brains, and a sweet guy to boot! And I'll tell ya, brains actually beats out back any day!

I agree!

>> Can you put a steel post into the ground there?

In my yard, it depends on where I dig and how deep. I was able to pound in some Tee posts, at least 6+ inches deep (maybe 8", I'm not sure). They seem really solid - I think you could make bricks from this clay.

I suspect my yard was treated like Natalie said: they bulldozed the whole area, and some spots got more rock than other areas. I was able to dig one area mostly with a shovel after the clay had been loosened - say, 10-20% rocks. I went down 1.5 to 2 feet there!

In another spot, just to get down 8-10 inches took many passes with pick/mattock/rake, pick/mattock/rake, pick/mattock/rake. Let's see, that was somewhere around 60% rock, 25% juniper roots, 15% clay.

That was one place where I decided that the beds could mostly raised ABOVE grade for a few years. Unfortunately, the existing juniper/rock formation was already raised somewhat above grade, and I didn't want a bed-on-a-pedestal .

You can't pound on rocks with a mattock blade, you'll dent or chip it. You can't pry juniper roots no matter how much leverage you have: you'll pull an arm out of a socket before the roots come out of the ground.

Pry a few rocks, chop a few roots. Repeat until you get enough clay free to be worth scraping it away.

Repeat.

I can't put anything in the ground without moving rocks.

I keep imagining that I had an anti-gravity or telekinesis super-power.

Just wave my hands to levitate and turn the top 8" of soil and rocks. Twiddle my fingers to levitate just the rocks.

Deep-turn a whole field in 60 seconds without a tractor.

If I develop that skill, I'll rent myself out as a human plow.