Two years ago we bought a half acre with lots of conifers in the northwest corner. The original occupants had an RV pad and they "landscaped" elsewhere with a combination of black plastic, some sort of impermeable fiberglass cloth, then they topped it off with either black lava, pea gravel or construction grade gravel. We made a big sifter and on dry days are separating dirt from rock and filling gabion tubes and boxes as split rail fencing and short retaining walls, just to get the stuff out of the way. But I'm wondering if simply wood chipping the RV pad and some of the (too expansive) driveways would build soil and the fruit trees we want to plant in those areas would be able to root through the gravel, and use the minerals in that gravel?
