Sunday, January 22, 2012

Clearing granite stones from the garden Part 2

This is actually the second part of a post I did here...

Our property is partially situated along a gradual slope... 
When the developers opened up this place more than three decades ago, they probably brought in loads of granite to construct walls to level and hold the soil as well as to prevent land slides...

The excess granite stones were probably too heavy to remove and I presume the developers took the easy way out and just buried the stones here and there...

The granite stones are huge, according to my standards... many are in the 200 to 300 kilogram range... 

When I was digging the potager to make the beds three years ago, I had to take out many, many stones of different sizes...

So, finally, you can imagine how glad I am to have them removed from our property... 
According to my stone-mason friend who came to assist me, this biggie probably weighed about a ton or so...

And so was this one...
He had this rather small looking transporter that could squeeze its way through our Japanese garden... 
The transporter had a width of merely 60 centimeters and I could never have imagined that such a small machine could move such a huge boulder...

He brought four machines... the spider-crane... the transporter as shown in the top two photos... the truck-crane which is shown in the following pictures, lifting the big stones up into the air onto the dump truck...

He came on three occasions, each working half a day... and on each occasion, I worked as his assistant, carrying chains and gadgets at his prompt...

These pictures were taken on the third occasion when the sky was really clear and crisp...
For the smaller stones, he had this metal container...
I was to pick up all the stones that I could manually lift, and drop them into the container...

Each time the container was filled up, he used the truck-crane to lift it up...
The stones from the container were then emptied into the dump truck...

And when the dump truck got filled up, it was time to transport the stones to his workshop...

All in all, we made three trips, and my friend estimated that each truck load weighed about two tons, which means six tons in total weight...

Pheew... now that more space is opened up in our garden, I am planning to plant the delicious raspberries while my sweeto haato... more flowers, perhaps?

14 comments:

  1. Congrats. I'm looking forward to reading your vegetables.

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  2. Wow, six tons of stone, that should make a huge difference in your garden. That little blue machine is pretty amazing, I can't believe how compact it is.

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  3. That is an amazing project! Beautiful rocks too - shame they were taking up soo much room.

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  4. Raspberries & flowers go together haha. Wow 6 tons of granite. So what are they gonna do with the granite? Make tombstones or decoration stones for landscaping? May you have a splendid Chinese New Year. GongXiFaCai.

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    1. Nope, the quality is not good enough for tombstones... apparently they are going to grind them up as pebbles for use to line the gardens...

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  5. Thank goodness for modern technology. Otherwise you'd probalvly need lots of strong men to transport the rocks out.

    Have fun planting! :)

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  6. You really enjoy gardening huh! I have never seen anyone planting so much vegetables and flowers in their garden! Happy Chinese New Year to you and your sweeto haato:D

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  7. Whew, such big stones. Now it looks like heavy burdens have been lifted away. You'll enjoy easier days ahead. Happy Chinese New Year 2012 to you and suweeto haato, Y. Kong Hei Fatt Choy!

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  8. The rocks were beautiful, but more garden space for raspberries and flowers is wonderful. Great pics!

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  9. Anonymous1/25/2012

    That was quite an undertaking Lrong! I know you are so pleased with the rock free space you have now...time to plant!

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  10. Huge stones!Selamat Tahun Baru Cina. I see so many big obstacle in your garden has been removed. A good way to start the year of the dragon.

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  11. Finally I can make comment in your blog! I have problem before....sigh...
    That's huge rocks!
    Happy Chinese New Year to you and your sweet Haato!

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  12. O the huge rocks will totally occupy my garden if they are in my yard!
    Happy CNY to u & family

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  13. Anonymous1/28/2012

    Wow. And we thought we had problems with rocks in our soil...

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