for reclaiming hardwood mulch I made a frame about 1.5 feet
by 1.5 feet. then covered the bottom with wire mesh. the
wire mesh has openings about .25 inch square. grab a few
hand fulls of mulch, toss into the frame shake and dump
the clean dirt free mulch into the collection container.


Yes, that's essentially what I've been doing with the rocks, using a
frame similar to what you describe that fits on top of my garden
cart. It's just that there are SO many rocks, and it's SO
inefficient. I have to shovel them off in a flat, shallow (back-
breaking) scooping kind of motion to keep from digging into the
ground, and once I'm finally left with only an inch of so of stones,
it's SO hard to get the last ones. They are too heavy for a leaf rake
to rake them off, too small for a garden rake, and each shallow shovel
full, by then, has a very small ratio of rocks to dirt -- just enough
for the rocks to still be in the way and keep me scraping away at
them.

Really, it's the worst mulch I've ever worked with in my life (I'm no
master gardener, but I've been picking away at it in one form or
another since childhood). I'd far rather be stuck sifting and
cleaning old mulch than weeding in these rocks.

Jo Ann