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RE: Bleaching gravel
A neat trick I picked up for sterilizing soil can also be done in the oven.
It should work perfectly for what you want to do. You will need a few tin
cans, old pots and such that can go in the oven. Fill them with the gravel
you want to sterilize, and top each off with water. Set the oven for between
250 and 300 degrees. (500 degrees is not necessary and would in my oven be
downright dangerous to the life expectancy of our house.) Set the containers
in the oven and let them sit until the water has completely evaporated. This
will take a while, bit when done the gravel (or soil) will be completely
sterilized, since there is almost nothing which will survive the combination
of boiling and desication. You can do this in an old barrel over a fire or
whatever, but the point is to boil the water out of the saturated soil or
gravel.
Personally, I wouldn't bleach the gravel either, since if it is porous
enough to leave some excess chlorine bleach, it may also be porous enough to
leave spores of the algae in nooks and crannies. Boiling it out will
eliminate these regardles of whether or not the liquid touches the spores.
Brett Johnson
Green Man Gardens
bnbjohns at home_com