When the soil is dry screening it is a doddle but when the weather turns is that the end of the topsoil season? Well this depends on how prepared you are and what steps you take.

The real question I suppose we are asking here is can I screen wet topsoil? There is a point at which the soil will become too wet to screen. It will stick together and block the screen as well as just end up in the oversize pile. It can be a disaster. We recommend on our miniscreens to have an elongated mesh in your arsenal for when conditions do turn damp. These meshes will keep screening after the standard square mesh has blocked up but even these meshes have their limitations.

Few people prepare for winter but those that do can sell topsoil all year around. There is still a demand for topsoil in the wetter winter months the question is can you fulfill that demand. It might make the difference between keeping your customers or losing them to your competitor who does screen all year around.

There are things you can do and it’s all about managing your stockpile of both pre and screened material. Whatever the time of year you will need to make sure your screened topsoil remains as dry as possible. This advice is really for pre screened material.

If you are lucky enough to be able to store it inside then that is the obvious answer. If you don’t have these facilities then you can stockpile material and cover it with a tarpaulin or something similar to stop the material getting rained on. Another technique is to create a pile of material and compact the outside layers with a machine to create a hard outer shell for rain to run off. When you do want to screen then you can remove the outer wet layer and screen the drier material inside the heap. The outer wet layer can then be put back over the top and compacted until next time.

Fresh dug soil even in the wettest of times usually comes up relatively dry under the surface. This needs to be screened as soon as possible after it has been dug up.

As you can see wet conditions can cause issues but with the correct management of your material you can extend your screening season to potentially be year round.