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            When you are planting something-whether it be grass, flowers, or other plants-it is important to have the right kind of dirt to plant it in.  We live in an area where there are a lot of boulders and rocks in the yards and planting something can be difficult if the right steps aren’t taken.  Dirt isn’t something that we wanted to pay money for, especially since our yard was full of it before we got any landscaping done.  In order for our yard to be ready for grass and the other plants we wanted to put in, we needed to do something about our dirt.  We got the idea to make the dirt we had more suitable by sifting it.  To do this we made our own sifter out of some wood and other materials.

            First I built the frame of the sifter by nailing some 2x4s together.  I measure the wheelbarrow that we owned to make sure that the sifter could sift on top of it without slipping off the sides.  For the sifting screen, I bought some chicken wire that had some fairly small holes in it.  I got some screws to secure the wire down starting from one corner.  The tricky part was pulling the wire tight so that there wouldn’t be any spaces where sifted rocks could get into the wheelbarrow.  After getting the wire secured tightly, I reinforced the screws using a staple gun.  We put it over the wheelbarrow and got to work!  It took some time, but the dirt sifter worked great and now our yard looks great!