Gravel in soil

Hi everybody !
I have just joined the site. Getting more and more interested in permaculture the more I read about it and have started to plan a re-model of the garden. I have a terrible lawn and was planning on turning it over and planting but the soil underneath is full of gravel ! Do I just plant on and hope the roots work down which I am sure they will whilst adding more organic matter all the time or do I need to remove as much of it as I can ?

Around here, the soil was formed as a river/lake delta during the last ice age. Some ground is clay, or silt, or sand, or gravel, or cobbles. I prefer to garden in the clay or silt. Gravel makes weeding harder, because it's hard to run a hoe through the soil, and depending on the size of the stones, can make cultivation difficult.

In my fields, I tend to haul off stones that are larger than 2 inches in diameter, as I come across them. Anything smaller than that, I  tend to leave alone. I'm only removing stones for the sake of weeding. The plant roots grow through gravel just fine. I have one corner of one field that contains a lot of 2" gravel. I don't plant there, I just leave it as a wild corner. The gravel came to the surface when trenches were dug to lay underground piping for the irrigation system.

I think the people who lived here before me must have had a love affair with the stuff ! It's everywhere. I will have a go planting into it and see what happens. If it goes wrong at least the compost pile will benefit.

Joseph has the right of it, dense gravel is bad news for tilling style growth. No-Till may be your only reasonable option [and is a preferred option for many on these boards anyway.]

i have a lot of shale up here which is a lot like gravel. i made 12in cedar raised beds on it and filled with some nice loam from a friend that has a construction business. this way you don't have to mess with the stuff. i did a raspberry patch in the shale and it was a nightmare! the raspberries took but i busted my rump trying to remove the bigger stuff. wound up scraping the thin topsoil into mounds and planting them that way.

We had a wide range of soil here on our 4 acres. One spot is mostly gravel were there was Driveway at some point. Its the spot wife wants a herb garden so we are sifting the top 4-5 inches then going to add lots of compost, Peat moss, Rabbit manure, and some top soil. Mix it then top with mulch.