Landscape rakes as de-rock-ifiers?

[icehorse]

We're in the early stages of building a couple miles of horse riding trails on our farm. Our soil is rocky, and we keep our horses barefoot. (If anyone wants to debate barefoot vs. shod, that's for a different thread ) We don't need a perfect de-rock-ification solution. It's hard to describe how good is good enough. I'd say if we can get 90 or 95% of the rocks bigger than an inch or so out of the trails, we 'd be thrilled.

I've watched a couple of videos suggesting that if you loosen the soil, you can then use an angled landscape rake to move the rocks in the soil into windrows. Once in windrows, it seems pretty easy to clean those up.

Does anyone have any experience using landscape rakes for this? Any tips?

Thanks!

 

[85Hokie]

That rake will do what you wish..............
but, if there are rocks under those loose rocks, you expose those and a little rain, you will right back to square one.

 

[DustyRusty]

I used a York rake on my backyard after we filled it with material from the other side of the lot. I made multiple passes and eventually seeded the area. I haven't had a problem at all with rocks, however, mine was fill and all the big rocks were removed as it was dug out. If you have larger rocks underneath, they will work their way to the surface during the winters in the frost thaw cycles. Not being familiar with your location I can't give you better advise. Also consider loosening the soil first with a rotary tiller, because the rake will not dig into hardened ground.

 

[ctfjr]

If its rocky soil rather than a tiller on the first pass why not use your box blade with the scarifiers down some? I wouldn't beat up a tiller without at least trying to weed out the bigger rocks first.

 

[icehorse]

Oops, I guess I forgot a few important details:

- My intention IS to use my box blade scarifiers to first break up the soil.
- Historically we get very little frost where we live. We might get one or two weeks a year below freezing, and getting into the "teens" is very rare.
- Our goal is to create 3 or 4 inches of loose material ("horse footing"). I expect that the footing will need periodic re-loosening. We have a good drag harrow.

Yes, I agree that deeper rocks will come up. Longer term, we're thinking of putting down a layer of geo-textile, then something like decomposed granite (or similar), which we'll compact, and then loose material.

 

[Russell King]

Why not just put mulch down on top of what is there? Maybe dig out the large exposed rocks

Large Hoofed animals will probably destroy most of whatever you do anyway