Broken Glass in Yard.

[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.