Making A Test Garden - Problems With Iron

[Roughwater]

I really wanted to Make a detector test Garden in my yard.  My first goal was to remove anything that would make a detector beep in a small area of my yard.  I had just bought a Apex pick with the 3 magnets so I though that would be perfect for clearing the yard.  However I dug only 2 shallow holes and found my yard is full of small iron rocks/pebbles as I pulled half a pocket full of pebbles from those 2 shallow holes.   So thinking now I will have to do something different.  Maybe buy some bags of dirt at the local Walmart

 

Apex pick iron 2.html

[Reno Chris]

And that my friend, is why so many successful prospectors use Pulse Induction machines by Minelab to reject the iron of the ground. Test your VLFs there in the ground anyway, and put those magnetic pebbles back in to the holes when you fill them - see how difficult it is to hear small target signals in the midst of all the ground noise clutter and how much depth you loose as compared to air tests. Then try it with your GPX 5000. It is a real life situation and I think you may be quite surprised with the results.

[Steve Herschbach]

What Chris said.

Just pebbles with magnetite in them - great stuff for a test garden. I specifically test in that kind of stuff because that is where gold often gets found - high mineral ground.

People have these test gardens and every time I see them talking about picking a dime up at 10" in their test garden I know they are in mild soil. I can get accurate id on a dime at about half that in my test site. Compared to all metal modes it is stunning how much depth gets lost just turning on the discrimination.

If you have mild soil you may as well air test. It seems to me it is the bad ground that separates the real detectors from the wannabes. The problem is if you compare your results in bad ground to all the online super results in mild ground you might think your detector is defective!

[Roughwater]

3 hours ago, Reno Chris said:

Then try it with your GPX 5000. It is a real life situation and I think you may be quite surprised with the results.

Thanks for the suggestion Steve and Chris.

What I think I'll do is do per your advice is both methods.  I"ll put some targets in my normal (really mineralized ground) and also set up some targets in some "mild", store bought ground.  I don't think I'll have to worry about putting all those ironized pebbles back in the hole though as there are many, many more I didn't bother to remove.  I suspected the ground was mineralized but till I dug into it with that Apex pick with the magnets I didn't realize how bad it really was. 

Terry