[Fwd: Soil care (roots)]
- Subject: [Fwd: Soil care (roots)]
- From: Marina & Anthony Green g*@pangeanet.it
- Date: Sat, 05 Oct 2002 05:09:10 +0200
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- Subject: Re: Soil care (roots)
- From: Marina & Anthony Green g*@pangeanet.it
- Date: Sat, 05 Oct 2002 05:08:13 +0200
Plenty of food for thought there.
There are some very big tough roots which belong to a fairly moribund old poplar, but I think I've worked
out what they look like (reddish, woody ones). The only other nearby large plants are some Pittosporum
tobira and some Agave (the latter, whose roots I'm not familiar with, I suppose could be the culprits, but
the roots do seem to come away fairly simply, and are a fibrous mass rather than having any woodiness to
them). Oxalis pes-caprae is fairly abundant in the garden, as well as in this area, though it doesn't seem
very prevalent this year (yet?).
I'll check the acidity of the soil and let you know whether that could be a cause, and reserve some of my
best compost for a small trial area to see if that makes any difference.
If I can't find a solution I'll have to continue with the current policy which is pots and containers -
seems like a shame on one of the few areas of soil in the garden!
Hope the weekend brings good weather !
Anthony
Bari, Italy
Tony and Moira Ryan wrote:
> Marina & Anthony Green wrote:
> >
> > I have an area in my garden which has a few rather weedy herbaceous plants, on which nothing that I
> > attempted to sow (nothing extravagant, just Alyssum, parsley etc.) would grow, and most of it didn't
> > even seem to germinate, but in pots in the same area they did.
> > So of course I dug up a square metre of soil and found that it is absolutely choked with roots, so
> > that the volume of fibrous root which I took out was almost equivalent to the volume of the soil! I
> > imagine the previous owners just never dug it over, so we could be talking 30 years of roots!
> > I have been told that this dead root material makes the soil far more acidic, and was clearly stopping
> > any development of plant life.
> > I am wondering whether to sieve the soil because it is so choked. Do I need to be so conscientious
> > about removing existing roots? Even if I spend an hour on one small square, every time I pull up a new
> > forkful of soil there is new root material to remove, and at this rate it will take until Christmas to
> > dig it over as I'm doing at the moment!
> > Any ideas or experience of this sort of thing?
> >
> Anthony
> My first reaction is to ask "what is producing the roots, and are you
> sure anyway the roots are actually dead?". Massive amounts of roots
> nearly always indicate the presence of some large shallow rooted tree in
> the neighbourhood, which many in fact be an astonishing distance away.
> Once I was called in to determine the origin of masses of roots which
> were invading a vegetable garden and after a good deal of detective work
> traced them to an elm tree in the neighbouring garden at least 16
> metres away! Elms are notorious for this and Japanese Cherries are
> equally bad. No doubt there are many others with similar habits.
>
> If the tree has been cut down in recent times and the roots are in fact
> dead, I am astonished they are not well on the way to rotting down.
> Unless the soil is waterlogged this would only happen I think if the
> ground is very short of living organisms so that normal recycling is not
> taking place. Such a soil would indeed be hard to grow things in.
> Normally in any live soil dead roots rot quickly and being well spread
> through the soil profile are a particularly valuble source of humus. If
> they really are dead, It seems that what your soil needs is really some
> manure of compost to accelerate the rotting process.
>
> I can't see anyway how dead roots which are NOT rotting could influence
> the pH. The reverse could I suppose be true that the roots are not
> rotting BECAUSE the soil is already acidic. There is also a faint
> possibility what is causing the lack of growth in the area is some sort
> of allelopathy (ie poisoning) as a few types of tree roots ( apple and I
> think ash, for instance) when rotting can produce such chemicals.
>
> However, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, my inclination is
> to believe the root mass does belong to some live tree which is simply
> using the entire soil for its feeding and making it very difficult for
> anything else to get a toehold in the area. If this is the case your
> labour of clearing may be in vain as the tree will alnmost certainly
> soon regrow with vast enthusiasm and reoccupy its territory.
>
> Where there is a massive concentration of live tree roots, there is not
> only fierce competition for food but even more for moisture and that is
> most likely why seedlings are unable to estabish themselves.
>
> Such a situation is pretty difficult to deal with effectively if you
> want to grow things unless you can get rid of the tree causing the
> problem, or block it off from the area by putting down barriers in the
> soil. Your best strategy might be to put a thick layer of newspaper or
> cardboard in the ground and then top this with a mix of compost and soil
> to create a raised bed in which you can plant. Hoever, I do warn you it
> may not be long before the roots fight their way through the barrier to
> help themselves to all the nice new food!
>
> Alternatively, this might be a place for standing plants in containers.
>
> Moira
> --
> Tony & Moira Ryan,
> Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ. Pictures of our garden at:-
> http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cherie1/Garden/TonyandMoira/index.htm
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