Shiva wrote:

...I did pull them out, and they look pretty much the same as
when I put them in. No vole chew marks, no evidence of any rot.
But it has been a while, and any little hairy roots may have just
disintegrated....

. The soil is great--heavy, black,
but soft and diggable. I bought some of it and added aged manure and
pine bark fines, the stuff that is bagged and sold as "soil conditioner."

Once I got some bagged "soil conditioner compost" that had some residual weed
killer. Not enough to kill things but enough tokeep them from growing. Have
you tested the soil PH?

I was of the habit of mounding some roses for winter with peat moss and in the
spring just raking the peat moss and spreading it around the bed. Eventually I
began to have trouble with replacement roses getting established. They seemed
to take a lot of extra water to prevent wilting in the summer and in a year or
two winter kill got them. One spring a new planted rose just leafed out and did
nothing. I dug it up and found no feeder roots had grown at all. Apparently
the plant was drawing up enough water without roots to green up , but not enough
to grow. Established plants in the same bed seemed to be OK.

A long odessey later, I found out that the soil had become so acid from years of
peat moss additions that new plants would not even grow roots in it.

You probably had a water problem, but I would not rule out a soil PH test.

Regards,

Charles
--
Charles Perry
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