Poor quality soil and fruit trees /soft fruit

[southlondongardener]

I have a small hill/waste land at the end of my garden. It is soil covered with rubbish and I was thinking of planting 2 or 3 apple cordons and soft fruit (gooseberry, raspberry and white currants) there.
However I think that the soil has lots of rubble in it.

If I put lots of compost/manure etc in the soil can I still plant them ?
Has anyone done this ?
Or could I just put plant the fruit bushes/trees in a compost/manure mound.

[veg4681]

We had exactly the same thing like you described when we first moved into our house. The previous owner used it as a tipping ground, all sorts of broken glass, bottles, metals ! We cleared out the hump, separated the solids from soil which we then sieved. Now we have fruit trees growing in there. Having said that, I still managed to gather more rubble-like soils from other parts of garden and have turned this little piled-up corner into a cosy patio area with paving slabs.

[southlondongardener]

Unfortunately we can not remove the whole hump as it could cause a train line to fall down !!
The hump is either rubble and soil covered with rubbish.
Or soil covered rubbish.

Plants do grow there now beech trees and vines.

[Two_Sheds]

I bet you could grow brambles on your hump

[SarzWix]

I've got one of those hump/lump things too
I was thinking I would just dig out a really big planting hole, sieve the soil that comes out and mix it with compost/manure/bagged topsoil to backfill the hole. Depending how weedy it looks, I might plant into a root-control bag to stop the trees/bushes getting overtaken with bindweed or some other nasty.... I'd better crack on with it actually, or it's going to be too late!

[southlondongardener]

I bet you could grow brambles on your hump

An idea as I need bramble for my stick insects.

However it is not that convenient for when I need bramble for them last thing at night.
I might have grow a reserve supply there.

At the moment there is lots of some vine (russian vine is that the name ?)

[Two_Sheds]

At the moment there is lots of some vine (russian vine is that the name ?)

Yeah. You don't want that, not really. Orrible stuff, spreads like crazy from suckers/runners

[southlondongardener]

It has all died down to give woody stuff over winter but last summer it was a real pain.
One reason for clearing this area is to kill it. If I put weed killer down now could I still plant stuff in a few weeks ?

[bobleponge]

SLG
We had a lumpy bit in our clay pit, er sorry ... garden, dug it out, including decaying strimmers, prams you name it. We also found that it had clearly been a compost heap at some stage in the dim and distant and it is now the only area of our garden with good quality soil. Try digging some out, you never know what you may find.

[Two_Sheds]

It has all died down to give woody stuff over winter but last summer it was a real pain.
One reason for clearing this area is to kill it. If I put weed killer down now could I still plant stuff in a few weeks ?

there's no point at all in putting weedkiller on something that's dormant. You'd have to wait till it started growing again (check the packet instructions though).
BBC - Radio 4 - Gardeners' Question Time - Factsheets
the link suggest ammonium sulphamate (but I think that's been withdrawn from sale now? although somebody is flogging it on eBay) or digging it out. Ammonium sulfamate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Good luck!

[veg4681]

It sounds like a daunting propect of clearing a gigantic hump. Any way you can level it off, spread the muck around so that you have an even ground but still on higher ground than the rest of the garden. Then cover with something like concrete, paving slabs etc only to put a gaint bricked up raised bed to fill with proper top soil/compost. That way all the muck gets buried underneath to give you a clean slate to work on. Sorry this isn't the best advice, rather a drastic, crazy and controversial one.