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What trinkets and treasures have you found while digging for planting?

8 years ago

The only things i have found where nails, batteries, bricks, and shards of glass. LOL

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akamainegrower

8 years ago

knuttle: Believe me, i find plent of rocks as well. By this time i've probably built 4 or 5 hundred yards of low walls for raised beds with them. As for a historically important 17th century building, almost surely not. There was a blacksmith on the site in the early 19th century, but the early clay pipe was probably tossed out with the bottles, cans, etc. from a fort built to defend the town in the war of 1812. Clay pipes are common finds. Finding one not in dozens of pieces is the only unusual part.

ilovemytrees: As late as the 1960's it was possible here to visit the local hardware store and buy as much dynamite as you wanted. The only requirement was that you sign your name in a ledger book. The dynamite was primarily used to clear fields of stumps, build farm ponds, and blast out ledge in order to dig cellars. The basement of the hardware store probably contained hundreds of pounds of the stuff. This laissez-faire approach to high explosives came to a rather abrupt end when protests and social unrest became common in the late '60's and early '70's. Several sticks of dynamite, btw, are far less likely to explode and contain much less explosive power than the tankful of gasoline in cars tucked into attached garages all over the world.

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Comments (11)

akamainegrower
8 years ago
Old bottles, glass insulators, hand forged iron hinges, nails and implements, pottery shards, intact late 17th century clay pipe bowl with most of the stem, early marbles, 18th and 19th century bricks, early porcelain doll.
krnuttle
8 years ago
What is the history of your site? Is it possible that it was the site of a 17th century building, that could be of historical significance?

The only surprises I get in my lot is when I can dig a hole and not find at least on rock. However I have found lengths of barb wire under the leaves in the back of the lot.
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ilovemytrees
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
I know it's not technically in the yard, but the people who we bought our house from had found a box of DYNAMITE in the crawl space, when they had bought the house. They called the police who then called the bomb squad. Eta: I will never understand how an inspector could miss such a thing.
bengz6westmd
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
Got a number of dug-up rocks with ancient marine fossils embedded in the sandstone.
gardener365
8 years ago
I can only speak for a friend that has dug enough arrowheads along with other American Indian artifacts to fill display cases on the entire 1st level of his home. The very best story of his is... he went to plant a 4" pot and hours later after locating a cache and a giant hole now in progess, the surplus of artifacts was overwhelming. His wife had left to go shopping or some such thing and hours later there he was still digging and all because of a 4" pot/potted plant. His property is a true goldmine for American Indian artifacts along the bluffs of the Mississippi River.

Dax
gardener365
8 years ago
This is a minor amount of his collection:

Dax
Toronado3800 Zone 6 St Louis
8 years ago
I found these big attractive pink granite "bricks" probably used to line something tondonwith the old creek or road 150 years back when my property belonged to the plantation across the street.
User
8 years ago
Are you kidding, I only misplace things gardening..., gold chain, eye glass. Glasses came off after the big clean up from Sandy lost forever in the tangled mess of vines, tree limbs, and bamboo. This is NJ, I have hopes..., may a dinosaur or wooly mammoth someday..., maybe Jimmy Hoffa. Who knows.
lisanti07028
8 years ago
I am in NJ as well, and I have found old medicine bottles, clay marbles, indian head pennies, and china dolls. My house was built in 1868, and they used their trash for landfill, it seems.
viper114
8 years ago
bones...lots of bones....but i put them there. Whenever I eat meat with bones in it, I dig the bones into garden to break down and add minerals.

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