Broken Glass in Yard.

[Shenandoah MF1760]

I bought 12 acres just up the road and uphill from my 25 when a month of rain convinced me that putting a house where I originally wanted to would be a continuous and expensive drainage battle.

One issue I have is that there is broken glass all over the area around the pole barn and where the mobile home used to be.

What would be the best solution for dealing with this?

Throw down some landscaping screen and cover with topsoil? Broken glass bits are light weight and will eventually come back to the surface unless something holds them in place.

Use a posthole digger and bury them deep enough that I'll never see them return?

The former owners/tenants/squatters created burn piles everywhere and apparently thought glass would burn

I bought the place off of the courthouse after a legal battle between the former owners so there wasn't anyone available to ask questions of. Everything I've learned has been from neighbors and contradictions abound. I gave the mobile home away to someone that promised to remove it quickly, and did. It was a disaster in it's own right but that's another story.

So, before I come up with a "creative" solution on my own that will likely take 4 times longer than I anticipate, and be 75-100% less effective than planned, does anyone know of a good way to deal with this?

 

[ChiefBodie]

Following this.

 

[deezler]

Hmmm. I am wondering what a big PTO-drive rototiller would do. If you could get the glass onto the surface, could you rake it up by hand?

 

[MapleLeafFarmer]

Is it all broken on the surface?

If you have enough soil depth and glass is on the surface you could dig a big hole, push top few inches of contaminated soil into the hole, use the dirt from the hole to replace the soil you moved.

 

[LittleBill21]

truck vacuum like they use to clear sewer pipes?

 

[fidowanttobe]

I had to clean up vandalism and trash around a grassy dumpster area at apartment complex.
Tried raking and sweeping but the only thing that worked was a large shop vac so I could "pick" it up. Worked actually surprisingly well but slow. Rake, vac, repeat.

 

[rgr33]

Your situation is similar to mine over the last 35 years.
There used to be a prune orchard here, and the previous owners hired a bus load of winos from Portland to pick the fruit.

They all came with a couple of 1/2 gallon bottles of cheap wine, and left the empties scattered all over the place.
Over the years, I have been picking up broken glass whenever I see it. It seems, after 3 decades, I will never get close to finishing the cleanup.

It’s somewhat amazing to me that the cattle have never swallowed any, and no punctured tires on any of the equipment.

 

[garry1p]

I had the same problem where the former owners dumped and burned trash behind the shed. This area was probably 12X12 and waist high.

I finally tore down the shed and used an excavator to dig out the trash/burn pile everything from small engine parts to plain unrecognizable junk. There was a "LOT" of glass and now 20 years later every once in a while the bottom of a glass jar will appear. I guess the bottom of the jar because that's the thickest part.
In another area there were oil oil filters, engine blocks, exhaust manifolds spark plugs and more glass. Most of this was carted off to the dump, the area raked over and still every once in awhile you find a a piece of glass.

To answer your question is there a good way to deal with the situation?

I have no idea how you you can get all the glass pieces up, but the good news, so far the pieces have been flat, laying even with the surface and not a threat to do damage I just flip the piece out and throw away.

 

[square1]

R&R the topsoil, followed by reseed, hydro seed, or sod. Best wishes

 

[etpm]

I had to get rid of a bunch of broken glass at my place. The previous owner had been using some of the land as a junk yard. I did get a bunch of glass containing dirt out of my hair by digging a 6 foot, at least, deep hole with my backhoe and dumping the glass laden dirt there. I figure at 6 plus feet deep the only way that glass will see daylight again is either when archeologists dig it up or when glaciers come once again from the north and dig up Whidbey Island. The glass isn't toxic, it doesn't contain lead since it was all window glass and glass jars and bottles, so I'm not worried about anything leaching out of the glass.
Eric

 

[Shenandoah MF1760]

The glass is mostly flat with a curved bit from a bottle here and there. One spot has broken tempered glass from I'm guessing a car door, that stuff is still as sharp as the Devil whereas the "ordinary" glass has less sharp edges - I guess from age, weather?

I think I'll try the shop vac method first since I don't have a backhoe. A while back I bought the largest shop vac available since I knew it was too large to fit in my sons car. I have finally owned one for more than a couple of years, every previous one disappeared.

 

[ruffdog]

R&R the topsoil, followed by reseed, hydro seed, or sod. Best wishes

That is what I was thinking too. Skim the top couple inches with a Harley rake and windrow it, then scoop and dump (fill a hole). Cover with nice soil and seed. Who knows what chemicals etc are in the old dirt that probably wouldn't grow grass anyways.

 

[LHF2019]

Ignore it. What does the rest of the area look like? I would be more concerned with metal objects creating flats then glass. Once you get grass growing you will never know its there. Find glass of all types around the farm and in the fields. Never once has it caused a flat.

 

[Racer4]

I had the same problems at my place. Busted glass on the little hill leading up to my tractor shed.

Several “glass bottle hills” in the woods, of mostly old empty beer bottles. Someone had a drinking problem. I gathered up as many intact ones as I could fit into buckets and loaded them into my Volvo 240, and took them to recycling. Dug holes and planted the rest of the shards in the holes.

Brother in law dug through the old trash pile on the other side of the stone wall and found a bunch of nice old bottles.

 

[big bubba]

my previous farm residents left broken glass...we on the other hand? leave mostly plastic
maybe plastic is easier on tires, but who's to say about environment impact as we pass it onto our kids.

i had a few ponds built over the years adjacent to the homestead site on my mt farm. lots of art deco & depression glass unearthed, plus old light blue glass mason jar fragments, plus white glass lids no doubt going way back... great history. & the glass never punctured a tire. good luck w/your project, regards

 

[Gem99ultra]

I can sure relate to this kind of problem. A few years after we bought this place we discovered that a portion out back had been previously a public land fill. I'm pretty sure that was many years ago since there are 40' trees growing back there. But yet, after walking the area recently I found piles of glass... all kinds ranging from beer bottles to mason jars, naturally all broken, back there. They just seem to slowly work themselves up to the top of the ground.
Picking all the pieces up would be a life-time task. I'm hoping someone can suggest a spray or pelletized product that just makes all that glass disappear. Snake Oil has already been suggested, but I had unsatisfactory results after 6 tries. I don't think I have enough years left in me to accomplish hand picking. Hopefully a more successful solution is forthcoming.

 

[mikester]

Scrape the surface and take to the dump or bury it. Glass is basically sand and inert.

If you are lazy use the tractor loader. If you are lazy and pernicious get your spouse/kids/grandkids to pick up the bits by hand.