Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
In article , Nothing as I
don't want SPAM! wrote: In a neighbours garden sucking all nutrients away. I can't grow a bloody thing. Any nasty thing I can do with out suspicion? She doesn't even care for the garden anyway. I wish to grow fruit and veg on my side of the fence. 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 -- "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com |
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Forum | |||
Overgrown conifers. | Edible Gardening | |||
Overgrown conifers. | Gardening | |||
Overgrown conifers. | Edible Gardening | |||
Pruning neglected, overgrown pear tree | Gardening | |||
Overgrown allotment? | United Kingdom |