After much hemming and hawing, I decided not to have a deck built off the back of the house just yet. Instead I've decided to create a pea gravel patio. There's a long, narrow spot between the house and the edge of the leach field, so it'll work great on that area. I did lots of reading about creating gravel patios, and figured it was something I could tackle.
SO! The patio.
The first thing I had to do was remove the masses of weeds and clover that had taken over the newly excavated area in the last two years. I tried using Reputa and my little york rake, but that didn't get down into the soil enough to rip the weeds out by the roots, so there was much hoeing and chopping and forking and swearing, but I got the area fairly knocked out. Once things were loosened, I was able to drag the rake over the area and clean it up a little. I tried not to get too far into the soil, because I was told not to take any soil off the top of the leach field, and try not to compact it too much by driving over it. Well, I kind of adhered to that.
I let it sit for a few days and bake in the sun, then raked it one last time by hand to clean up any residual debris. I then marked out the area I wanted to use, made my adjustments, and laid down some landscape fabric.
My research led me to understand that the best method of laying gravel is to use a larger aggregate with a binding material, which creates a more stable surface. I went with 3/4" crushed gravel, and on top of that I would put a layer of pea stone. The area is roughly 30'x15', so I needed about 3 yards of each, give or take. I called the local gravel folks and told them what I needed, and set up a delivery. In the meantime, I combed the interwebs looking for the perfect edging. What I wanted was the new fangled, no-dig edging. Let me tell you, pounding in the pins for the landscape fabric had me swearing all over again (hello, soil with mostly rocks) and I knew I was taking a gamble on that type of edging, but I wanted it to be secure. I found some that was described as 4 1/2" tall and purchased a couple rolls of it. It arrived the day before the gravel delivery and I was horrified to discover the 4 1/2" was the length of the edge that gets bent inward and fastened to the ground to the top of the actual edging, meaning that the actual edging was only about 1 1/2" tall. I was figuring on 4" of stone, so this clearly wasn't going to work. In a panic I called about six different places that sold landscape supplies, went online again and searched, but kept coming up empty. There was a thin pound-in edging, but I had used it before and I wasn't impressed with it. At the very last minute, staring out over the back yard and desperately trying to solve my dilemma, I noticed a pile of stones at the edge of the pasture. These were the stones that had once been a field stone wall that we had to remove for construction, and I had piled them up knowing I'd use them for something else. Oh, happy day! I would use field stones for edging!
I didn't need them to be some perfect wall, I just needed them to hold back the aggregate, so I lined them up and will add to them later.
A very blurry (but the only one) picture of the crushed gravel.
And it worked! I kept the ends open so that once I got the bulk of the pile spread by hand, I could drive Reputa over it with the york rake and move it around a little.
The pea stone was delivered the next morning, and since it was ridiculously hot and humid, I waited until the cool of the evening to spread that. I did it by hand, and rushed the job because we're supposed to have some rain tomorrow.
The rain should really help settle everything in. I've left it fairly thick on both ends because I need to stone it in, then I can really work on leveling out the humps and making it pretty. The end behind the mini split compressor will be the sitting area, since that's the most level spot.
Once I've finished this, I'll be working on the wildflower meadow in front of it. It's almost surreal to think I might actually have my own yard by the end of summer!
