Compost compost and more compost. Your fish guts idea is good too, anything to build organic matter in the soil and bring the life back. You could also try cow or sheep or other ruminant manure (avoid horse as can be full of seeds, leading to weeds).
If this were my place in Brisbane, I’d probably spend 3-6 months remediating the soil before trying to grow anything. Especially if you want to grow food plants. Might be different timeframe in Melbourne so hopefully someone there will chime in with advice.
All the best to you!
Exactly. An entire thick thick layer. And maybe some loamy top soil. As thick is it can be. We’re looking at subsoil here. It’s to be covered, not remediated!!!
Honestly - get it tested first by the EPA for contaminants .
Inner cities can have hotspots of industrial waste.
Not trying to scaremonger but at the least it’ll give you and idea of what you cam safely do with it.
Even if it’s free of nastiness you’ll get a breakdown of the structure ( clay content etc )
Soil contamination in Melbourne and the testing by the EPA was on Gardening Australia on Friday night. catch it on iview so you can understand why the soil test is vital before you grow food in the ground
Why test the sub layer?!?! OP needs to bring in top soil which the builders have entirely removed. If what we are looking at in the photo is contaminated, then what?
No, but do you see gardeners excavating their subsoil and stratum? That shit is deep. So let those who’ve done that step forward and tell OP how it went.
Calm down …. No one mentioned excavating down to a substrate level.
It’s about knowing what’s in your soil and making a plan if need be. Raised garden beds for instance if they want to grow produce.
If were badly contaminated, I’d want to remediate it personally- even if expensive. If it were somewhat contaminated (whatever that might mean) I’d avoid growing food in it, and consider remediation or at least some kind of cap anywhere I expected small children to play.
Remediate how? If it’s lead and PFAS, and you wanted to rid your garden of it, you’d excavate all of that out. If it’s, as I expect, about as bad as every other garden in such areas, you’d add heaps of compost. Which I would agree with. My point is that everyone is suddenly an expert on soil contamination and thinks it all needs to be removed, or thinks that it can be remedied. Misinformation runs thick. Look at the tiny number of people who submitted their samples to the Dust 360 study in Melbourne so far. You can almost predict even from that, how bad your soil might be based on where you are. BUT!!! These studies are conducted on top soil as per instructions. The builders have removed all that and now it needs to be readded.
https://iupui-earth-science.shinyapps.io/MME_Global/
My parents started will clay like that in Altona. By the time they sold the place it had the most gorgeous, rich loam. Lots of organic matter. They actually got permission from council to collect seaweed. It needed washing to remove most of the salt, but it was perfect.
If you are thinking of raised beds, you will be able to build good soil into them. As others have said, compost is key. You want LOTS of organic matter. Compost, well rotted manure. You could also make a few compost heaps and then move them around. Same with your raised beds. If you use metal sides, move them every few seasons, and you will find the soil underneath has improved immensely.
Don't think of planting much until winter. You could also try putting down a layer of manure then a newspaper or brown paper/ cardboard layer, topped with mulch directly on any areas you want to plant in.I'd go sugar cane mulch.
Also, research no dig beds for the raised beds. Starting them now while it is hot and humid(er) will accelerate the maturation. Plants any kind of peas and use them as a green mulch layer
Make up a framed mesh screen and angle it. Shovel dirt up to the top, as it falls across the screen, the dirt will fall through the screen, and the stones will roll to the bottom in front of your feet.
As a teen I did hundreds of meters of dirt like this to clean it up.
Its hard to say without putting a shovel in it but if they have left you with subsoil full of gravel and rubble compacted by machinery you might be better just bringing in some quality soil. You can start by testing the drainage, google the dig hole fill with water method. Things that are more deep rooted and hungry will be more difficult like fruit trees. I’d be tempted to rehabilitate with large amounts of quality compost and potentially some pioneer plants that can be removed later. Fast growing hardy acacia’s some tussock grasses and mulch.
You could be looking at years though.
A-lot of people opt for retaining walls and new top soil. You want something PH neutral. 50% compost %loam. I always include composted wood chips as well. You might consider hiring a horticulturalist or permaculturalist for a consult, can be useful to find the quality suppliers as well. In my experience doing the job properly at this stage will save time and money in the long run.
This is what I came to say. OP soil and compost are cheap as when you’re buying by the meter. Love me some permaculture but would never hire a permie for a landscapers job.
Lot of landscapers no zero about soil conditioning or restoration. Though they’re some good ones who plant more than cordylines. You do very basic horticulture as landscaper trainee.
No there would be some real good landscape gardeners but I’ve also talked to some on the Aus Landscape contractor page who say they hate plants lol Very skilled at structural stuff though. In my experience garden designers will bring in both horticulturalists and landscapers but in this case you could get your soil assessed before you start getting quotes for walls ect. I only say permaculture because good professional ones should know how to do restoration with pioneer planting, which is underrated IMO.
Had similar soil, added Gypsum, lots of organic matter (manure/compost), kept turning my mown grass into it, pulled out the big chunks and kept up the water - took 6-12mths but soil is beautiful now
be really careful with the fish guts. coming from someone who's been dealing with rats digging up buried food scraps for the past month.
i would do a soil test, pour jadam microbial solution everywhere. it's amazing adding food scraps directly into the soil... but it can become a huge problem with rats. the soil, microbes and worms love it. but it's kind of irritating having tunnels and soil flung everywhere.
Dig, break it up as much as you can and then add a LOT of organic matter. My personal favourites is manure covered by compost covered by bark clippings
That’s not soil. That is crusher dust. The fines left over from commercial stone crushing. It’s good for under pavers or driveways. That’s it.
You will need to bring in some actual organic soil.
A few people are saying gypsum- gypsum is used to treat sodicity, which is when the dominant ion in the profile is Sodium. If your soil is sodic, gypsum will help. If your soil is not sodic it will not.
The easiest test for sodicity is called an Emerson Test. Get an aggregate about the size of a 10c piece and gently submerge it in a dish of water (ideally rainwater). Do not disturb the water and check it ten minutes later. If it remains intact it is stable. If little 2mm pieces fall off it it is slaking. If it immediately expands, then falls apart it is swelling. If it looks like chocolate milk it is dispersive.
Sodic soils are dispersive. Add gypsum (calcium sulphate) because the calcium ions will displace the sodium ions and it will flocculate (stick together again).
Everything else is fixed by the addition of organic material, except swelling clays, which if you built your house on you have bigger problems than your garden beds (swelling clays look different though so you probably don't need to worry about that).
I’d get it tested. Step zero. If badly contaminated, get it removed.
Then - gypsum for clay breaking. First thing, get the clay broken.
Second thing - compost, seaweed, dynamic lifter and fungi. Get the organic biome working asap. Add more than you think you need. Fungi is important too, it helps break up soil.
Third thing - get it green. If you want lawn, make sure water penetrates the ground, but when it does, get the lawn in. Roots really help. If not lawn, get plants in and mulch.
Good luck!
Cheapest way is arborist mulch, often free from
A local arborist or council. Layer it on 100mm thick 2-3 times a year and allow the organic matter to build up. Also layer with Pea straw to add more organic matter and fix nitrogen. Alternative is to buy in compost to speed this up. Build up soil levels locally to any substantial tree you plant.
Whoa whoa wait!!! That is not your top layer. Crappy builders remove all the top soil and take it away without brining it back. That’s so that they aren’t working on soft ground. What is supposed to be done is to keep and fill it back in after building or not scrape everything off the plot in the first place, it so as the maintain the local biota. But they’re lazy. You now have to put a top layer down - don’t bother trying to turn this crap into soil, it would take a pretty long time. Just get yourself plenty of compost and build up a top layer. As deep as you can. There isn’t much point testing now because that is not plantable top soil. Sure, it might have lead and other heavy metals but you can’t remove any more. And even if it is contaminated, you’ll just have to avoid planting some edible crops. And by the way, plenty of edibles don’t transfer those things into the fruit. I know everybody is trying to play it safe here but testing the sub layer at this point doesn’t help you when you’re planting out later because you have to put a top soil layer down. You can’t plant into that.
Organic matter (after testing). Just get as much into/onto as you can. I raked up autumn leaves, saved all the clean cardboard & paper (don’t use cardboard food containers - they contain PFAS). Use all your veggie scraps (even ask your neighbours) and see if you can get some spoiled hay, used bedding straw, wood chips or clean sawdust. You want to achieve a balance of green/brown materials. You could buy soil but it’s expensive and never as good as what you can make at home.
Is there anything growing at all? Try giving it a good water and see what comes up. The weeds that grow there will give you some indication of what’s lacking. Let them grow and then mulch before flowering. They’ll put roots into the soil and start activating the microorganisms and fungi. Basically you’re aiming to have 100% soil cover (either plants or compost) so these little guys can do their jobs.
It looks really rocky to me. I'd want to get rid of a lot of it to be able to make space for something rich and mulchey. Either sieve out the rocks or just get rid of a good few inches. Then get a combination of things in: compost, mulch, manure. You can get good quality soil delivered by the truck load and then distribute it with a wheel barrow.
If you want to do the compost thing manually you're going to need a lot of organic materials.
I'd be getting that tested as recommended by others, just to make sure there is nothing dodgy if it was a former industrial site or anything before getting too far into improving it (especially if you're putting edibles in)
If it’s not contaminated and you’re working with it as is, check for:
*Sodic character; can lead to high risk of erosion/dispersal. Don’t know how to check but internet or an expert probably does
*Clay vs sand content; shake up a sample in a jar or water and see how it separates into layers, and/or roll a sausage and see if you can bend that into a ring shape
*Check ph; with a kit from bunnings
These things will guide next steps.
You guys are awesome, at first I was very disheartened, but your recommendations give me hope!
Step 0: Sift out gravels and stones, see what's underneath. If possible I want to avoid buying top soil as moneys pretty tight after settlement 😅
Step 0.1: Test, already registered with GardenSafe, sending them samples soon!
Step 1: Start home composting (probably just a small compost bin, it's only 8x3 meters space)
Step 2: I'm going to prep a small patch with manure, compost, mulch, and just see how it goes, if test comes back not contaminated, I'm going to dump manure and compost all over.
Step 3: Give few months for things to settle down.
Hopefully I can give a positive update! I'm reading each comment and writing down all the suggestions!
As others have said it needs a major introduction of organic material which you can do with your own kitchen scraps or you can contact a local coffee shop/cafe and get their waste and just keep digging it in. Lawn clippings, even cardboard. Anything that was once alive is organic waste so even cotton or linen clothing. Some plants are also soil beneficial and are called "green manure" which you grow and then turn back in to the soil. Just google green manure for best plants in your area. Good luck!
Compost compost and more compost. Your fish guts idea is good too, anything to build organic matter in the soil and bring the life back. You could also try cow or sheep or other ruminant manure (avoid horse as can be full of seeds, leading to weeds). If this were my place in Brisbane, I’d probably spend 3-6 months remediating the soil before trying to grow anything. Especially if you want to grow food plants. Might be different timeframe in Melbourne so hopefully someone there will chime in with advice. All the best to you!
Go to a fresh food market and ask for their scraps and then bury that. That soil is awful!
Thanks for your reply! Cow manure is great idea!
Exactly. An entire thick thick layer. And maybe some loamy top soil. As thick is it can be. We’re looking at subsoil here. It’s to be covered, not remediated!!!
Honestly - get it tested first by the EPA for contaminants . Inner cities can have hotspots of industrial waste. Not trying to scaremonger but at the least it’ll give you and idea of what you cam safely do with it. Even if it’s free of nastiness you’ll get a breakdown of the structure ( clay content etc )
Further to this, look up GardenSafe, run by the EPA. Soil testing is free in Vic!
Oh wow didn't know they're free! Thanks for sharing!
Soil contamination in Melbourne and the testing by the EPA was on Gardening Australia on Friday night. catch it on iview so you can understand why the soil test is vital before you grow food in the ground
Why test the sub layer?!?! OP needs to bring in top soil which the builders have entirely removed. If what we are looking at in the photo is contaminated, then what?
You think any contamination will just remain at sub surface level ?
No, but do you see gardeners excavating their subsoil and stratum? That shit is deep. So let those who’ve done that step forward and tell OP how it went.
Calm down …. No one mentioned excavating down to a substrate level. It’s about knowing what’s in your soil and making a plan if need be. Raised garden beds for instance if they want to grow produce.
If were badly contaminated, I’d want to remediate it personally- even if expensive. If it were somewhat contaminated (whatever that might mean) I’d avoid growing food in it, and consider remediation or at least some kind of cap anywhere I expected small children to play.
Remediate how? If it’s lead and PFAS, and you wanted to rid your garden of it, you’d excavate all of that out. If it’s, as I expect, about as bad as every other garden in such areas, you’d add heaps of compost. Which I would agree with. My point is that everyone is suddenly an expert on soil contamination and thinks it all needs to be removed, or thinks that it can be remedied. Misinformation runs thick. Look at the tiny number of people who submitted their samples to the Dust 360 study in Melbourne so far. You can almost predict even from that, how bad your soil might be based on where you are. BUT!!! These studies are conducted on top soil as per instructions. The builders have removed all that and now it needs to be readded. https://iupui-earth-science.shinyapps.io/MME_Global/
I’m not a soil remediation expert so I don’t pretend to know how, but I would want some info and would use that to understand my options :)
Builders special 😂
My parents started will clay like that in Altona. By the time they sold the place it had the most gorgeous, rich loam. Lots of organic matter. They actually got permission from council to collect seaweed. It needed washing to remove most of the salt, but it was perfect.
If you are thinking of raised beds, you will be able to build good soil into them. As others have said, compost is key. You want LOTS of organic matter. Compost, well rotted manure. You could also make a few compost heaps and then move them around. Same with your raised beds. If you use metal sides, move them every few seasons, and you will find the soil underneath has improved immensely. Don't think of planting much until winter. You could also try putting down a layer of manure then a newspaper or brown paper/ cardboard layer, topped with mulch directly on any areas you want to plant in.I'd go sugar cane mulch. Also, research no dig beds for the raised beds. Starting them now while it is hot and humid(er) will accelerate the maturation. Plants any kind of peas and use them as a green mulch layer
Make up a framed mesh screen and angle it. Shovel dirt up to the top, as it falls across the screen, the dirt will fall through the screen, and the stones will roll to the bottom in front of your feet. As a teen I did hundreds of meters of dirt like this to clean it up.
Its hard to say without putting a shovel in it but if they have left you with subsoil full of gravel and rubble compacted by machinery you might be better just bringing in some quality soil. You can start by testing the drainage, google the dig hole fill with water method. Things that are more deep rooted and hungry will be more difficult like fruit trees. I’d be tempted to rehabilitate with large amounts of quality compost and potentially some pioneer plants that can be removed later. Fast growing hardy acacia’s some tussock grasses and mulch. You could be looking at years though. A-lot of people opt for retaining walls and new top soil. You want something PH neutral. 50% compost %loam. I always include composted wood chips as well. You might consider hiring a horticulturalist or permaculturalist for a consult, can be useful to find the quality suppliers as well. In my experience doing the job properly at this stage will save time and money in the long run.
This is what I came to say. OP soil and compost are cheap as when you’re buying by the meter. Love me some permaculture but would never hire a permie for a landscapers job.
I was talking about the soil conditioning consult re permies/horts not structural retaining walls for sure.
Yeah I still think a landscaper is going to have more relevant experience but just my 2 cents. I did my PDC about ten years ago.
Lot of landscapers no zero about soil conditioning or restoration. Though they’re some good ones who plant more than cordylines. You do very basic horticulture as landscaper trainee.
I might have overestimated the profession based on r/landscaping
No there would be some real good landscape gardeners but I’ve also talked to some on the Aus Landscape contractor page who say they hate plants lol Very skilled at structural stuff though. In my experience garden designers will bring in both horticulturalists and landscapers but in this case you could get your soil assessed before you start getting quotes for walls ect. I only say permaculture because good professional ones should know how to do restoration with pioneer planting, which is underrated IMO.
Had similar soil, added Gypsum, lots of organic matter (manure/compost), kept turning my mown grass into it, pulled out the big chunks and kept up the water - took 6-12mths but soil is beautiful now
Rototiller and a HEAP of cow/horse shit dug into that soil. Like, absurd amounts if you want stuff to grow.
be really careful with the fish guts. coming from someone who's been dealing with rats digging up buried food scraps for the past month. i would do a soil test, pour jadam microbial solution everywhere. it's amazing adding food scraps directly into the soil... but it can become a huge problem with rats. the soil, microbes and worms love it. but it's kind of irritating having tunnels and soil flung everywhere.
Dig, break it up as much as you can and then add a LOT of organic matter. My personal favourites is manure covered by compost covered by bark clippings
That’s not soil. That is crusher dust. The fines left over from commercial stone crushing. It’s good for under pavers or driveways. That’s it. You will need to bring in some actual organic soil.
A few people are saying gypsum- gypsum is used to treat sodicity, which is when the dominant ion in the profile is Sodium. If your soil is sodic, gypsum will help. If your soil is not sodic it will not. The easiest test for sodicity is called an Emerson Test. Get an aggregate about the size of a 10c piece and gently submerge it in a dish of water (ideally rainwater). Do not disturb the water and check it ten minutes later. If it remains intact it is stable. If little 2mm pieces fall off it it is slaking. If it immediately expands, then falls apart it is swelling. If it looks like chocolate milk it is dispersive. Sodic soils are dispersive. Add gypsum (calcium sulphate) because the calcium ions will displace the sodium ions and it will flocculate (stick together again). Everything else is fixed by the addition of organic material, except swelling clays, which if you built your house on you have bigger problems than your garden beds (swelling clays look different though so you probably don't need to worry about that).
I’d get it tested. Step zero. If badly contaminated, get it removed. Then - gypsum for clay breaking. First thing, get the clay broken. Second thing - compost, seaweed, dynamic lifter and fungi. Get the organic biome working asap. Add more than you think you need. Fungi is important too, it helps break up soil. Third thing - get it green. If you want lawn, make sure water penetrates the ground, but when it does, get the lawn in. Roots really help. If not lawn, get plants in and mulch. Good luck!
Cheapest way is arborist mulch, often free from A local arborist or council. Layer it on 100mm thick 2-3 times a year and allow the organic matter to build up. Also layer with Pea straw to add more organic matter and fix nitrogen. Alternative is to buy in compost to speed this up. Build up soil levels locally to any substantial tree you plant.
Whoa whoa wait!!! That is not your top layer. Crappy builders remove all the top soil and take it away without brining it back. That’s so that they aren’t working on soft ground. What is supposed to be done is to keep and fill it back in after building or not scrape everything off the plot in the first place, it so as the maintain the local biota. But they’re lazy. You now have to put a top layer down - don’t bother trying to turn this crap into soil, it would take a pretty long time. Just get yourself plenty of compost and build up a top layer. As deep as you can. There isn’t much point testing now because that is not plantable top soil. Sure, it might have lead and other heavy metals but you can’t remove any more. And even if it is contaminated, you’ll just have to avoid planting some edible crops. And by the way, plenty of edibles don’t transfer those things into the fruit. I know everybody is trying to play it safe here but testing the sub layer at this point doesn’t help you when you’re planting out later because you have to put a top soil layer down. You can’t plant into that.
I would just remove it and put new normal soil. Expensive? Yes. Practical and quick? Also yes.
Probably last resort 😭
P.s. Rose will not mind that soil as much, bury a good sized fish under each as you plant.
Organic matter (after testing). Just get as much into/onto as you can. I raked up autumn leaves, saved all the clean cardboard & paper (don’t use cardboard food containers - they contain PFAS). Use all your veggie scraps (even ask your neighbours) and see if you can get some spoiled hay, used bedding straw, wood chips or clean sawdust. You want to achieve a balance of green/brown materials. You could buy soil but it’s expensive and never as good as what you can make at home. Is there anything growing at all? Try giving it a good water and see what comes up. The weeds that grow there will give you some indication of what’s lacking. Let them grow and then mulch before flowering. They’ll put roots into the soil and start activating the microorganisms and fungi. Basically you’re aiming to have 100% soil cover (either plants or compost) so these little guys can do their jobs.
It looks really rocky to me. I'd want to get rid of a lot of it to be able to make space for something rich and mulchey. Either sieve out the rocks or just get rid of a good few inches. Then get a combination of things in: compost, mulch, manure. You can get good quality soil delivered by the truck load and then distribute it with a wheel barrow. If you want to do the compost thing manually you're going to need a lot of organic materials.
I'd be getting that tested as recommended by others, just to make sure there is nothing dodgy if it was a former industrial site or anything before getting too far into improving it (especially if you're putting edibles in)
That looks like pure road base. I'm not sure if there is any soil at all.
I'd be scooping as much as you can out, then bring in new topsoil. Test, as others have suggested.
Get some chickens..the poo will improve soil markedly and will be able to easily grow lawn or plants.. 😁
Oh man, I'd love me some chooks but my MerriBek council doesn't allow them in townhouse 😭
If it’s not contaminated and you’re working with it as is, check for: *Sodic character; can lead to high risk of erosion/dispersal. Don’t know how to check but internet or an expert probably does *Clay vs sand content; shake up a sample in a jar or water and see how it separates into layers, and/or roll a sausage and see if you can bend that into a ring shape *Check ph; with a kit from bunnings These things will guide next steps.
That looks a bit suss. Maybe get it tested for asbestos.
You guys are awesome, at first I was very disheartened, but your recommendations give me hope! Step 0: Sift out gravels and stones, see what's underneath. If possible I want to avoid buying top soil as moneys pretty tight after settlement 😅 Step 0.1: Test, already registered with GardenSafe, sending them samples soon! Step 1: Start home composting (probably just a small compost bin, it's only 8x3 meters space) Step 2: I'm going to prep a small patch with manure, compost, mulch, and just see how it goes, if test comes back not contaminated, I'm going to dump manure and compost all over. Step 3: Give few months for things to settle down. Hopefully I can give a positive update! I'm reading each comment and writing down all the suggestions!
As others have said it needs a major introduction of organic material which you can do with your own kitchen scraps or you can contact a local coffee shop/cafe and get their waste and just keep digging it in. Lawn clippings, even cardboard. Anything that was once alive is organic waste so even cotton or linen clothing. Some plants are also soil beneficial and are called "green manure" which you grow and then turn back in to the soil. Just google green manure for best plants in your area. Good luck!