What do you do with small rocks?

I live on a vast field of sand and tumbled rocks left behind when the glaciers receded. It's been colonized by lots of plants for thousands of years since then, so there's a little soil on top. Whenever I dig, I pull up smallish rocks. I have never encountered a rock too big to move pretty easily on this property (though I've brought some in on purpose). But they're all tumbled and round and small. My practice, for the last three years, is to toss them at the ground of the nearest tree, so some trees near where I've done more digging, have formed little skirts of mulch-rock around them. Not so much as an intentional thing as just an easy rule to have in place.

So I've been meaning to ask. What do you do with rocks like this?

The picture below is those that were big enough to notice while digging out the post for our old mailbox which I just replaced. It is very representative of what's below ground just everywhere.

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If you sort them by size and color (and maybe shape?) then you've got a product you could sell?

Build walls out of them?

This is a really good post. And I say this not because of the post, but for what the post represents.
This is a personally edited version especially for you

Serenity

Oh Mother Earth, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as You did, this little rock filled world

As it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that You will make all things right
If I surrender to Your Will;
So that I may be reasonably happy in this little rock filled life

And supremely happy with You and the little rocks
Forever and ever in the next.
Amen.

Now ask yourself that same question, it's not an answer someone else can provide.

Take down your Goliath.

Christopher Weeks wrote:I live on a vast field of sand and tumbled rocks left behind when the glaciers receded. It's been colonized by lots of plants for thousands of years since then, so there's a little soil on top. Whenever I dig, I pull up smallish rocks.

The joys of living with glacial till - just be thankful you only got the little rocks that you can move. We've had a number that required the rock drill and "feathers and irons" to split it up into 5 pieces that still took two people to move!

At the moment, I'm also blessed with a bunch of tall buckets, so I've been sorting them small, medium and large as I've needed to dig areas. My plan is to dig a trench, put the medium ones at the bottom (what I call "medium" would be the ones closest to the toes in the picture), then put fencing up the center of the trench, and the small rocks on either side  of the fencing. The goal: a garden area that the bunnies can't dig their way into! I also want it to double as a winter chicken run, so ideally I'm going to make it hard for mink or rats to get in either.

So yes - I would sort and pile them in places you can easily get them back out of, and consider all the things on your wish list! Think of them as a valuable resource.

Rock garden Rock garden ideas

Dennis Goyette wrote:Rock gardens

The former owners of the house we live in did a lot of "gravel" and "small rock" rock gardens. From experience, in a climate that grows weeds all winter, and drops leaves/needles/catkins/helicopters/cottonwood fluff etc, etc, all year round, gravel and small rock gardens are a huge amount of work to maintain. Many of the areas, I've abandoned even trying, and at least one gravel area, now gets mowed several times a year because it's turned into half-decent soil!

In the right climate, right location, and for the right reasons (like keeping the bottom of a fence from rusting in our wet winters), gravel and rock can be a great option, but in my climate, I'd go for wood mulch from our chipper/shredder any day, or even planks of wood I've salvaged. Both of those options will eventually biodegrade into soil which I can use to grow things.

I get that. We have some of that kind of stuff that was here when we moved in and it’s full of maple seedlings.

Dennis Goyette wrote:Take down your Goliath.

When I was younger, "Goliath" was my older sister and I could get by with the comparison if I kept the rocks small enough....

....

I'll bet that operating in glacial till is all sorts of fun.

In other places, this would be prime material for French drains or rip-rap to prevent erosion where high water flows would occur.

The big rock at the left looks like a cross between a trilobite and a flounder. With eyes!

I wonder if this has Etsy potential?

I throw them into the woods. I have no use for them, and have not discovered any particular use. The best use I have is keeping my throwing arm in shape.

The post somewhere above that suggested filling a trench to keep rabbits from burrowing is a good idea. But it is easier to throw them in the woods than collect and save them in buckets and dig trenches. So for now I will keep throwing them in the woods until such a time as I need a rabbit trench.

Mulch in dry areas or erosion control.
Even stacked walls in the garden beds if they need raised edges.

I've got lots of rocks too.  I dunno if this is from glaciers or just the Great_Flood_of_1862 and its ilk.  Apparently an event like that is expected to happen every couple of hundred years or so: it rains for forty days and nights and the California Central Valley becomes an inland sea.

The loam in between the rocks is actually pretty good soil, I think, it's just that it's effectively mortar in a stacked-stone wall, yeah?  If you wanted to build a cheap fortress, this is what you would make it out of.

Rocks!  I am saving up to literally buy those rocks for 2 projects.  

First, my house came with a 7 feet deep hand dug well with a 36" culvert casing.  The subdivision is flood irrigated but my property, the lowest in the whole subdivision, does not get any of that water (I am actually grateful) so I get a little well.  The well runs completely dry in under 5 minutes using a trash pump so I don't use it anymore/yet.  I have since capped the end of- and drilled holes in an 8 inch diameter stick of pvc and stabbed it into the muck, filling around it with all the gravel and rocks that I can find.  So there is that need....I have 2 more feet to fill.

Second, since I am located in the 500 year flood plane I have acquired railroad ties to build a serious foundation for a little hard-sided 6x8 seed starting greenhouse (Palram).  I plan to make a frame for the base filled with pit liner and gravel and then bolt the base of the greenhouse to the ties.  I will then make a larger, outer frame of railroad ties for a kind of step and terrace to keep pots and me out of the springtime swamp.  Both frames are planned to be filled with washed rock....that is a lot of rocks.  I think the ties are about 12 inches tall.  It will be nice to be high and dry during snow melt and early rains.

I also surround my house with pit liner and washed rock, to keep my crawl space a little drier.  I sit large pots of flowers and wheat on top of those rocks.  And the resident snakes enjoy the warmth on those rocks as well.  They are my anti-rodent and anti-grasshopper posse.  

Ha Ha, I like to toss them into a pond from my lawn chair...
They also make good drainage around fence posts.

Lots of the MN glacier rocks polish up nicely in a tumbler.  Might be a new hobby.  Just saw one that glowed under black light that was pretty cool.

Gray Henon wrote:Lots of the MN glacier rocks polish up nicely in a tumbler.

I just filled a tumbler with rocks collected on the shore of Superior 2.5 weeks ago. The ones in the yard don't seem anything special, but maybe I'll try a load and see what I get.

I've got a trommel screen that I built, so when screening my compost, or sometimes soil to remove sod and stones, I easily can sort them by size. I keep a few of baseball size handy to toss in to shake out the trommel when it gets clogged with wet material
I've used a bunch as roadway fill. Some as drainage in pots, some under the drip line of our walk-in flower cooler.
I also use them as mulch/ballast along our garden deer/rabbit fence line. There's a strip of landscape fabric directly below the fence held down by large bricks on the outside to deter digging and also hold down the flap of chicken wire, and covered in stones on the inside to hide the fabric and not need trimming against the fence.
I've set aside a bunch of pea gravel for a future build of a rocket mass heater for our greenhouse.
I have a collection of the "heart-shaped" stones, set about in random places that I frequent, just because.

Cross-linking another, similar thread.

I have snow sleds on my house's slate roof and it pummels the ground right underneath. I have found filtering dirt from rock as I dig into a wheelbarrow and dumping the stone along the roofline saves the ground from the abuse and disperses water well.