Nice post, but the person who asked will not read it, or do any of the
suggestions so it's a waste of time for that purpose. Oh well...at least some
of us tried.


On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 11:12:41 -0800, (paghat)
opined:

Except in a minority of cases, neighborhood tree preservation is the
matter of greatest importance. It is highly unlikely any trees are sucking
all nutrients from the soil. Trees, shrubs, subshrubs, & prennials can
interact indefinitely greatly benefiting one another. There would be no
such thing as undergrowth in the forest if a couple trees could destroy
the soil, then even the trees would drop dead. Nature is much smarter than
that.

Trees certainly can cause deep shade & within their dripline can keep the
soil pretty dry, so that ahy garden would need to be suitable to shade &
receive supplementary watering on a regular basis to flourish well.

If you have crappy soil, you have crappy soil. If there is nothing planted
in an area, soil does tens to get crappy, because the percentage of
organic material diminishes over time from lack of plant life, then worms,
beneficial funguses, & the microflora diminishes which stops production of
soil nitrogens, & if a shrub were plopped in there without restoring the
soil it would die because without beneficial funguses in the soil a shrub
won't be able to produce needed sugars. Other reasons for crappy soil
would be that builders of the house built up the soil with the worst
possible (but best-compactable) fill; there is something unhelpful in the
characteristics of the sub-soil;

If the trees greatly shade the garden, you'll be limited in veggy choices,
as most veggies need lots of sun to produce much, but some things
including carrots & many other root crops, some leaf crops, & broccoli,
ought to do well in moderate amounts of shade that would stop cucucumbers,
eggplants, tomatos or peas from doing much of anything. But if there's
plenty of sun all afternoon or for at least half the day, that's plenty.
You do have a legal right to trim back branches that overhang your yard,
in order to get more sun to a veggy patch or for any reason that strikes
you, just try not to make the trees ugly doing that, as they are part of
the back-drop of your gardening too, & you should be able to use their
presence in a positive way.

If your neighbor's trees are of a type that send long roots over the
surface & right into your yard thick & dense all over the place, then
that's a problem all righty. You can cut through the roots two two or
three feet depth before adding compost, rabbitshit, or peat to increase
the organic matter in the soil, which when kept moist restores the
microflora. Cutting the roots out probably won't kill the the trees (if it
does, it'll take five to ten years), but root-cutting does excite new root
growth, so the soil may need deep churning with removal every five to ten
years, OR you can trench the area along the property line & put in a root
barrier, which in the olden days were made of concrete thick as retaining
walls, but now are made of 90-degree-raised-rib molded plastic panels
available through landscaping companies or bamboo companies, one big
manufacturer being the Deep Root Corporation.

It's not good for neighborly relations to resort to courts, but if real
damage is being done, courts are an option. If a neighbor has the sorts of
trees that do cause serious damage to neighboring property, then a record
of damage should be kept, an arborist's expert opinion should be written &
notorized that the trees are in fact harmful, the neighbor should be shown
the proofs as "fair warning" that his trees are put him in the way of
legal action, & if the problem is not fixed, damages can be recouped in
court. There are time-limits for liability, but as a rule you can expect
to win provable damages that occur within a six year period. The trees'
owner would have to have been provided sufficient advance warning to have
time to rectify a problem.

From what you say I doubt the trees are a problem, because very few trees
do this sort of thing; arborist Jon Cocking says at least half of all
trees removed because of all sorts of root-damage problems (such as harm
to sidewalks or building structures) were never part of any problem &
never needed to be removed, & in some cases where really nice trees might
be sacrificed, it is a good idea to get root DNA analyse before blaming
the wrong trees. But there are sufficient exceptions to make it pretty
commonly settled in courts.

You have the legal right, without permission from or notice to your
neighbor, to remove trespassing tree roots as well as overhead branches
(you have no right to poison the roots or branches). Usually there's no
reason to worry about nearby roots unless they're the sort to lift patios,
injure foundations, or cause subsidence. But certain elms, silver maples,
norway maples, & a few others can be the sort of trees that produce so
many surface-traveling roots that a large surrounding area can be dense
with roots that would spoil any chance at gardening. All trees have a few
surface or feeder roots which can sometimes run for twenty, thirty feet, &
for the sake of the trees these shouldn't be molested, but a few trees
produce hundreds or thousands of these feeder roots. If you DON'T have an
obvious & VAST number of surface roots everywhere, there's not even a
secondary problem caused by those trees, so just plow a lot of organic
matter at least a foot deep and raise the height of the bed for additional
soil & good drainage, plant stuff, & keep it watered.

Another exception would be if your neighbor's trees are walnuts. Walnut
roots exude a growth-suppressing toxin that can keep an area dead within
their dripline, unless you select specific plants that do thrive where
there is juglone in the soil & shade overhead. It is possible to garden
around a walnut but you'd have to start with a list of the many
juglone-tolerant plants.

-paghat the ratgirl






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