simy1 said:

(Pat Kiewicz) wrote in message

m...


I make an exception:
If your garden is withing reach of tree roots, you should yank a broad fork up
through the beds each year. (The aim isn't to churn over everything, just rip
up the invading roots while they are still small.)


After a post of yours a couple years ago on tree roots, I have
experimented with root removing methods because the woods are only 20
ft from my garden. Here is what I found: in my sandy soil you can push
a spade in, and if you hit a root, the soil is loose enough that you
can push a cutter or even a handsaw and cut the root (yes, you can saw
through moist sandy soil). This year I have done it around the
perimeter, not just where I would run into a root in a bed, and I have
cut several 2 inch roots and maybe two dozen one inch ones. I can
already see that the beds, this year, are not drying as fast as in the
past.

Sounds good -- I assume you don't have many rocks? I sometimes can't
get a spade down or a stake in where I want them. (One whole side of my
house has a strip of rocks laid in that were pulled from the vegetable garden.
When we filled it up, I threw them in the road. Now they've paved the road,
so I'll put them in the trash.)

It'll help that we cleared a lot of weed trees off an overgrown section of the
neighbor's yard last year. They were shading and stealing water and
nutrients from the garden. We've got a few more to go -- ailanthus, Siberian
elm, Norway maple -- but we will leave the wild cherry trees that are in
the back corner. (And we left a multiflora rose because it's just too thorny
and a catbird usually nests in it.)

--
Pat in Plymouth MI

Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
(attributed to Don Marti)