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Re: Soil Screens (longish)

Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html

Say Jess, ya do wash the thing out before ya cook yer hydrangeas in it,
right? <big grin>

Seriously, for small sifting jobs any ol' thing will do, that lets the good
stuff through, and holds in the bad stuff (Good stuff =fines; bad stuff
=rejects, is how the big power sifters talk...)

The Lee Valley catalog has a page of sifters, and the little ones are pretty
cheap, and would doubtless do the small jobs better than a kitchen strainer;
I have the little green 1/4 inch one.

Since I figured out that making a riddle that fits on my trash can lets me
sift 3-4 shovels full of stuff at a time, with greatly reduced effort, I
hardly use any other sifting method---and I have a number of the things,
including a big A-frame and several smaller riddles, all of which should be
bigger than any normal person's kitchen stuff....:-)

I saw an archaelogical dig on TV the other night, and they had suspended a
square sifter underneath a tripod on ropes (or maybe chains, I don't
recall); that also seemed to work well.

There is another design for a sifter from Ecology Action, in their Backyard
Homestead and Mini-Farm Logbook, that also has a suspended sifter of
wheelbarrow size on a frame made so you can wheel the barrow underneath it,
then shake the stuff thru with the aid of the suspended, swinging screen.
This seems to me to be another step up from the Cantopper thing, for a
larger operation, and more reasonable than that fellow Leon's Large Sifter:
http://www.mastercomposter.com/sift/leonpile.jpg

Anyway, those are my siftings thru my thoughts on sifting....give them a
screen test in your gardener's imagination!

Frank---ya wouldn't think he's strange, would ya, if he didn't eat his
hydrangea? :-) BTW small hydrangeas are often used in cemetary plots here
with limited space, so having the right variety for the space you have is,
as Mahthah would say..."a good thing"...:-)

Jessica said:

> Ok ok I know I am a little behind on responding to this subject but I just
got back from vacation. I had to screen my soil before planting my potatoes
because it was full of gravel and other debris (used to be part of the
driveway). Anyhow, instead of going out and purchasing materials to build a
screen I used my good old kitchen strainer. After I was done, I washed it
out. Its that simple. It worked wonderful and I have never seen my potatoes
do so well!!
>                     -Jessica-


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