At 06:04 AM 5/20/03 +0000, Pat Patterson wrote:

pie shaped wedges...you should remove the soil from wedge shaped
sections...should NOT cut out a wedge, roots and all.

one sided growth...probably caused by your "pie" slicing...if you cut
through the roots.

For several years I used the "wedge cutting" proceedure, having read somewhere
"...cut out pie shaped sections..."

Undoubtedly, I lost some trees as a result of (pie slicing) messing up the
root
systems. Then I heard "...carefully remove the soil from wedge shaped
sections...disturb the roots as little as possible..."

What a difference.

Pat

This makes a whole lot of sense. I was never a believer of the pie system,
preferring to actually getting into the rootball to see what was going on.
In nearly all cases, I remove all the soil, but do it in winter so there is
a very long recovery period.

If roots are very tangled and particularly if they are spiraling, removing
wedges of roots will indiscriminately cut through a mass of good
functioning roots. The only survivors will be the portion originating in a
particular wedge. The rest of the root length will lie dead and buried in
every other remaining wedge.



Brent in Northern California
Evergreen Gardenworks USDA Zone 8 Sunset Zone 14

http://www.EvergreenGardenworks.com

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