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| I am landscaping my backyard (over an acre of area). There are some areas where the soil appears rather compacted from where the previous owner used it as extra parking for his teen son's pickup and various things. Between organic matter and manually breaking it up, I'd like to keep it as natural as possible after that. One thing I plan to do is install some walking paths. What are better types of paving methods and materials that require little compaction of the soil underneath? In my limited knowledge, for concrete you need a pretty compacted surface to install it on. Are "pavers" and alternative materials better in this regard? |
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- Posted by toxcrusadr 5 (My Page) on Mon, Dec 10, 12 at 11:09
| I would say so. Of course even pavers will move a bit, and depending on the soil type, the only way to guarantee they don't may be to put in gravel and sand and compact everything. But if it's just a casual walking path, maybe that's not critical, and you might not need to go whole hog with the installation. Have you considered natural paths covered with wood chips? You can use an edge of some kind to keep the mulch in. |
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| I like shredded bark for pathways and will be using it more extensively as I continue to landscape my property. Organic materials, such as bark, eventually decompose at soil level but adding more as necessary will keep the path in good condition for walking. Overall it will improve the soil which paving stones or concrete will never do. I don't use anything to edge the pathways as the bark mulch continues into the perennial beds. The plants themselves delineate the edge. If the paths were thru lawn one would need something to edge them. |
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| I should correct my statement that one would need some form of edging for a path thru lawn. Where my mulched perennial beds meet the lawn there is no edging but I have the edge cut yearly so it stays relatively clean. I used natural rock for a path thru one of the large perennial beds - on the far left of this pic. The stones were set on the soil but have sunk a bit and should be raised. There are a lot of empty spaces in my garden this year after extensive weeding and removal of self-seeders. Spaces will be filled in the spring.
Here's a bark mulch path thru another bed with rocks edging it because I wanted the level of the path a bit lower than the bed so the mulch could be deeper.
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- Posted by purpleinopp 8b AL (My Page) on Tue, Dec 18, 12 at 11:19
| I'm not sure I understand the concern over compaction under paths, unless you want the paths to be transient. |
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| I have laid thousands of feet cubed of pavers and if your ground freezes in the winter you will need to compact well under the pavers or in a year or so they will be dangerous to walk on as they will heave and buckle making tripping very easy. |
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| I made a path through my backyard plantings by cleaning all weeds and saplings and covering it with bark. I do not need an edge because the plants (hostas, bushes) form the border and the same bark mulch is used in the plantings. A former parallel path I converted to a dry creek bed by digging several inches down and filling it partially with pebbles. It works beautifully during rain, and during dry weather serves as a walkable gravel path. |
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| Soil becomes compacted when the pore spaces between the soil particles, that normally hold air, are compressed and the air is squeezed out. adequate amounts of organic matter can help keep those soil particles seperated and hold air in the soil so the mineral particles do not collapse on each other. More than likely where that truck was parked you would find, upon analysis, that the soil contains little to no organic matter. You could, as suggested by luckygal, use a mulch rather than some other, harder, material or you could add sufficient amounts of organic matter to that soil first and then lay down about any paver you wished which would aid in spreading the weight on the soil some but would still require periodic additions of more OM so the soil does not again compact. |
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