My soil is full of gravel and dirty fill, but I want to convert it to growing space.

Northern Indiana, USA.

Soil here is generally a sandy loam, but a lot of my 1.6 acre property was heavily disturbed over the last several decades, and now there are areas full of gravel, concrete waste, and even asphalt chunks. I'd like to get another 3,000+ sqft cleaned up and start cropping it to try and apply for a 2nd EQIP high tunnel. I've had the soil tested for heavy metals and oil, and found nothing concerning.

I have a small kubota with a FEL and bucket, but not much else. I'm not opposed to purchasing and/or renting equipment as needed.

I'm hoping someone has clever ideas of how to read this space. I've spoken with people from NRCS, my local SWCD, various farm groups, etc. Just haven't found a particularly good way to handle it yet. My ideas are:

- Pay someone to come remove the top 6" or so over the whole area, then bring in clean topsoil (will be really expensive)

- Build a soil separator and rent a machine to slowly dig up the area, tumble out all the stones/junk, then return the cleaner soil and add clean fill as needed

- Get teeth for my FEL bucket, use that to pop out any of the bigger pieces, then get a pto tiller to bust up the topsoil and rake out any of the worst areas to clean it up

- Remove the big pieces, and buy a 'stone burying tiller' for the tractor to just push any of the smaller pieces deep enough to not be in the root zone

I'm open to other suggestions and/or reassurance that one of these is my best bet. First year or two would be growing something like wheat, sunflowers, or sorghum just to get a crop on it for the purposes of meeting EQIP funding requirements, then switch to diversified veggies once it's covered.