Cleaning out Landscape Rocks

This video shows the method I used to separate the dirt from the landscape rocks around our house. This was by far the best way I found to perform this task but it was still a lot of work.

[terry]

Best YouTube video I've seen in years. Quick, effective, to the point, done in about just 1 minute. Great job.

[edb]

This method works great with one addition. Raise one end of the screen up about four feet so the rocks will roll off the screen and pile up at the bottom. Toss the shovelfuls onto the top of the screen and let gravity do the rest. I propped up one end with a step ladder and put a wheelbarrow under the screen to catch the dirt. Worked great.

[jimw]

I have used this method in the past. Two other great ways to clean the rock are vacuum and blow. If you don't want to move the rock, grab your shop vac and while keeping two to three sections of the hose pipe in the vertical, you will be able to vacuum out the loose dirt and dead matter. The rocks will make it half way up the pipe before falling back to the ground you may have to occasionally reduce the suction to allow the rocks to fall back, but they won't get to the vacuum. I've also taken the dirtiest of river rock in my wheel barrow and spread on the driveway. Hose it down then let it dry in the sun. Run a broom across it for a minute to loosen the dirt off the driveway. Then use a blower straight down to separate the dirt and debris from the stone. Both worked great for me.

[Tinyteacher]

Thank you for your advice! Right now, I wish I had a handy partner, didn’t have health and back problems, weren’t a perfectionist, 4’ 9”, pushing 70, and didn’t have an issue with what was a beautiful yard in Michigan! I have stone beds that are in an L shape, with really cool stones that have fossils, Petoskey stones, sparkly stones, etc. I realized they were growing weeds, baby trees, and roots were coming out. I started to inspect, and found a mess! There is heavy plastic underneath, but huge roots, like trees, grew from somewhere, and poked holes in the plastic, lifted it up, and now I have two layers of dirt and roots intermingled with stones I need to free (and free the big worms above and below the plastic), sift and clean the stones, build up the dirt, level, replace the plastic or use sand or something to lift it higher. I’m breaking my back pulling everything out and cutting long roots with loppers, cutting little roots, moving the worms, trying to figure out what to fill the dirt in with, and looking on You Tube to see what to do. Now I guess I’ll have to build a sifter, sift, wash, level the dirt, put more plastic or paver sand down, and replace the stones. It will take me until the end of the summer! Oh, boy!

[Ytviewer]

This is a great idea! Thanks for the video. We built this frame on Friday and did the first chunk of our garden yesterday. It worked awesome. I love stone landscape gardens and ours was filled with old mulch, dirt, and moss. We lifted the frame more off the ground and set it on the front of the wheelbarrow so we could push it right in and save on shoveling. We got rain for a few hours right after we finished. I’m sitting outside this morning drinking coffee and that stone looks BRAND NEW. Thank you for the idea on how to do this.

[such_a_delight]

Omg this problem has been plaguing me for MONTHS. What a great solution.

[Frmrspecialist]

I just started tilling my yard and quickly realized that the greatest limitation was all the massive rocks in the dirt. I started thinking about something exactly like this to filter out all the rocks. Awesome work!

[aaron]

I used a powerful shop vac with a chicken wire screen.. get as much dirt as you want up. If weeds grow back burn them with a torch. Much easier work.

[MrWolfSnack]

I just did this when I was refurbishing my 25+ year old rock garden. The rocks had sunk into the dirt and became compacted. I went a step further though and washed the rocks to brighten them up and get the mud off, the sun and weather will finish the job at bringing the color back, my pressure washer is currently broken so I just have a high power hose nozzle.

I took all the rocks out a handful at a time, and then once I was down to the old plastic wrap bed over the clay that was all rotted, I tamped the soil out and graded it away from the foundation, and then laid down a thin bed of sand, and then landscaping fabric over top of it. Then I took a milk crate propped up on bricks and did a crateful of rocks at a time and hosed them down. Once they were cleaned, I dumped them back into the garden pit. It makes a big difference, as I had photos from the 90s of when the garden was somewhat new and it was a lot brighter and more colorful and the rocks were more "fluffed up" and not so trampled. I found a lot of blueish and red colored rocks and I put those aside to save as a topper to make it more colorful and "pop" without looking too planned out and still randomized.

[madtrexman]

I did basically the same thing, just a little different. I had a metal framed table that the glass top was missing from. I put expanded metal on top for the screen material. I can put the wheel barrow under it to catch the fines. It saves some shovel work. Good idea and great video. It is a lot of work though. I can save on gym membership for a while!

[markspeltz]

Finished making one of these (or similar) today, and it’s working pretty well! I actually had everything I needed around the house except some good screws, so had to pick those up. I have some smaller rocks that I’m trying to save and reuse, so I’m using the smaller 1/4” square mesh that I had. The dirt falls through easily though and it goes quicker as you get the hang of it. I’m actually using a garden rake to stir and pull the rocks. I use the normally used side to pull the bigger, heavier rocks, then flip it and use the flat top side for cleaning the smaller ones off.
Thank you for the idea!

[jules]

I need to find some neighborhood kids to sift for me. Thanks for sharing! Maybe I'll hide some gold painted rocks. 😆

[bryanbatts]

Aweosme!!! When you get the dirt out of the rock bed that keeps the weeds from germinating. This is awesome and exactly what I needed. For me every 4 years would need to be done.

[jkwo]

This is exactly what I'm looking for. The guy installing a gravel pad for my new barn did a half ass work. He took my money and left tones of work for me to finish. My yard terrain does not level. He used the gravel to form a slop at the lower end. Now I need to build a retaining wall at that spot instead. But first I need to remove some already mixed gravel and dirt from there. Then this tool will be ideal for the next step of separating the gravel from the soil. Thanks.

[GeneralRELee]

I use a similar method, but I made a box out of 2x6's that fits on top of a gorilla cart dump wagon with pegs that hold the box to the wagon, the shifter box has handles to lift and 1/2" steel mesh, works to shift product or screen dirt.

[derekdonahue]

Most of the work seems to be figuring out how to make a sifting contraption out of the cage wire and wood to do this. That's the part I'm struggling with right now. Has anyone figured out a site where you can buy something to staple the fencing onto?

This idea isn't talked about enough and it's exactly what many people need to do. Thank you for making this video.

[ScottishAtheist]

Honestly, brilliant. I have been using a griddle, it takes SO LONG.

[wandakowalski]

I used a piece of hardware cloth to clean the rocks in a small area and it worked well. Decided to do the rest of the yard in 3/4 stone ... very pretty. But imagine my surprise when the 3 tons was dumped on my driveway and it was covered in sand and coarse sediment ... it was unrecognizable. At first I did your big NO and tried hosing down the pile. ... doesn't work: the pile was too high and water didn't penetrate - like you said. Then I spread it out on the driveway and washed it with the hose. Didn't work: so much mud and sediment accumulated under the rocks, and the rocks just go roll away. And it was really a chore to sweep all the scattered stones into a pile and shovel it into the wheelbarrow because there was so much mud underneath. I was so frustrated so I used a large household sieve, filled and sprayed with hose. It only takes about 10 seconds to clean each fill bu the the but the mesh was tight and some of the coarser sediment wasn't washed away. Just because it was SO tedious, I timed it. It took 30 minutes to fill a wheelbarrow half way. At 2 inches thick, it only covers about 2.5 square feet. I have 330 square feet. Today I will build a similar hardware cloth frame but I'll elevate it so I can just push the washed stones into the wheelbarrow and deal with the mud as it accumulates. LESSON LEARNED: make sure if you are buying bulk stone, see if they wash it! And if they don't, set aside a many, many sunny days when you could be kayaking instead but hey, think of the muscles you'll build up dealing with the mess!!!.

[Cowboydjrobot]

This is great, im trying to remove all of the rocks in my yard and this would be a great way to do that without throwing away the soil

[markthorogood]

I've built something similar to do the same job - only difference was really that it was at the same height as my barrow - means the dirt sifts straight into one barrow, and the rocks fall into another - saves double handling.