Re: Soil Screens (longish)

Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html
Hey!  As a new sqft gardener, we had to get creative...... we were trying to do this on a shoestring budget.  We started from a lawn, and we did use a soil screen.  Hope I'm trying to describe what you're asking about, a sort of a "sifter" for the soil to get rid of the rocks, twigs, roots, construction debris left, stuff like that.
 
We looked at the photos in the book, with an upside down "V" shaped screen, where you just toss a shovelful of soil against it.  We felt that may not work for us,since our soil was really hard and lots of rocks.  Here's what we did.
 
Bought hardware cloth, which is essentially like window screen with much bigger (1/2") holes in it.  Built a rectangle the width of our beds using old PT lumber we had laying around.  Stapled the screening around the outside of this frame.  Decided the weight of the dirt would prolly pull it off the frame pretty soon, so we built another frame around the outside of the first one, sort of "sandwiching" the hardware cloth inbetween the two frames.  Still with me?
 
Then, we took this double built rectangle with screen, scooted out the dirt in one end of the bed to the middle, set cinderblocks up on end, laid the sifter on top of the blocks, over the empty bed, and shoveled the dirt back onto it.  If you can picture this, we're sifting the soil back into the bed......shaking it was too heavy, so with work gloves, we just sorta swirled it around.
 
The sifted dirt ended up in the bed, the grass roots, rocks and "stuff" stayed in the sifter, we picked it up and dumped it out.  When the section of bed under the sifter was full, we'd move the block and sifter to the next section of empty bed, and do it again.
 
I hope this was understandable, if not, just email me.  Trust me, it took a lot of "but honey, we only have to do this ONCE" to justify this to my dh, but now that he sees the difference in how his garden is growning and my sqft, he understands.
 
Debbie, Southeast Alabama, zone 9 I think.
.  My question is: What kind of soil screens have you used?  Page 64 of the Square Foot Method book shows an example of one.  Has anyone used this one?  Thanks for any input you may have.  Tracy Lusby
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