One common landscaper trick is to rake your stuff on a SMOOTH HARD surface, like a concrete sidewalk slab or a sheet of plywood, using either a hard iron rake or a leaf fan rake, according to what you're working on. The hard bits stay behind and you don't dig up new ones.

And no, you can't have unmixed detritus left over. This really minimizes it, though.

Interesting problem. I can see how the similar size does not allow sifting. Rocks and acorns are denser and heavier though, so they should sort themselves to the bottom if you can agitate the pile. I guess the leaves are shredded so the whole pile is probably kind of dense. Is there a way you can vibrate or shake it? Put some in a flat box and shake it back and forth?

Or just forget about it, compost it all and sift it after it's composted. :-]

PS If you are raking leaves off of gravel, you need a leaf blower instead of a rake. It can gently blow the leaves off without picking up rocks. That's how I clear my gravel driveway of leaves.

This post was edited by toxcrusadr on Mon, Oct 27, 14 at 10:34

Gina,

I have the same problem with ponies'poop because during the night they have access to an outside park of gravel and they poop there and then the otherwise great pure poop I rake is full of gravel.

I tried to sort the poop apples but now I can see exactly where I put them in my garden. For example one artichoke is now surrounded with pure gravel ! All the poop has disappeared during the warm season and the poor plant is mulched with useless stones !

Obviously Tox's blower would make a nice mess in my case, a bit like in your american saying the poop hits the fan, so I now double rake :

First I rake the upper surface superficially, and gather the useful poop, then I rake the remains, gravel and poop, and throw them in the prairie.

I guess this is not very helpful for you now that you're stuck with gravel, acorns and leaves, but perhaps next time you could rake the upper layer of leaves and keep them, and then throw out the lower layer, leaves mixed with gravel and acorns.

I thoroughly compost the material as normal, and then I shovel it onto a big square of hardware cloth (small square wire that comes in rolls) stretched on a frame, rubbing with a gloved hand to separate the compost from the stones, dirt falling through and stones staying behind. I learned this trick from my dad. It is still a little time consuming, but it is also effective for picking out the cut worms and other nasty grubs hiding in the compost that will bite all my seedlings off at the ground.

I was raking leaves off my gravel driveway just the other night. It takes a light touch with the rake to take off the layer of leaves and not get the gravel. I ended up raking the heavier 'drifts' and followed up with the leaf blower to get the last of them. I used to hate leaf blowers, and I still don't believe in wasting my time blowing every single blade of grass clippings off the entire sidewalk just to be neat. But they are quite useful for certain tasks.