Trees with Shallow Roots

Getting ready for fall planting trees? Near a deck, patio or pathway? Here are some general guidelines to allow for adequate space root growth: (All info. from: Roots Demystified, change your gardening habits to help roots thrive.)

- It’s best not to plant trees between paved areas with less than three feet of soil to grow.

- Use trees that mature at less than 30 feet tall when you have a space with three- to four-feet between paved areas, such as between a sidewalk and the street next to a patio or foundation.

-If you’re lucky enough to have a space of five to six feet between paved areas, you can plant trees that mature as high as 50 feet tall.
With trees higher than 50 feet you’ll need at least eight feet between paved areas.
[in the March 31, 1995 issue, p. 36. Prepared by Sherry Rindels, Department of Horticulture Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. ]

Trees Incompatible With Paved Areas:
Common Name, Latin Name, Cultivar, Zones, Size (H’/W)’.
Red Maple, Acer rubrum ‘Franksred’. Zones 3-9, 45’x 35’.
Sugar Maple Acer saccharum. Zones 3-8, 70’x 45’. (Pictured here.)
European Beech, Fagus sylvatic. Zones (4)5-7, 55’ x 40’.
White Ash, Fraxinus americana. Zones 3-9, 60’x 60’.
Tuliptree, Liriodendron tulipifera. Zones 4-9, 80’x40’.
Sweetgum, Liquidambar styraciflua. Zones 5-9, 70’x 45’.
Southern Magnolia, Magnolia grandiflora Zones 6-9, 60’x 50’.
London Planetree, Platanus x acerifolia. Zones 4-8(9), 80’x 70’.
American Sycamore, Platanus occidentalis. Zones 4-9, 80’x 80’.
Poplars, Populus nigra. Zones 3-9, 80’x 12’.

Basket Bondage?

It’s spring in full-tilt boogie. Where there are gophers, the trend has been to plant in wire baskets. In the past ½-inch aviary wire was used. While fairly easy to work with, it doesn’t last a long hardware cloth with regards to rust. There are some pre-made commercial wire baskets. They aren’t very deep, but the wire is studier than aviary wire.

The fear is what happens to the roots that grow thru the wire. As illustrated in my blog of 5/10/10, many roots are eaten at the wire’s edges. This makes the plant more like a container plant with the roots feeding only within the wire basket. Those that do manage to escape the cruddy teeth of the western pocket gopher have to deal with growing in and thru the wire.

The question is as the roots that grow thru the basket, as shown on the left, get harmed and is growth reduced? Wire can be included within the tissues of growing plants without apparent harm. The other photograph shows how an oak tree is slowly swallowing a 4” X 4” sign post.

In my experience a plum tree planted in a very shallow wire basket was greatly stunted. It failed to produce the thicket of long spindly shoots each summer. With all the other trees planted within 4’ deep & 3’ wide baskets, seems the trees a perfectly happy. They are the Asian pear, plum, plumcot, apple, and persimmon trees.

So it seems wire is simple swallowed up by the basket and the transport of water & nutrients up-and-down the tree remains relatively unharmed.



“BUY FROM THE SOURCE TO HELP KEEP WRITERS WRITING”


Let me know what you think. Visit my web site to learn about my new book on drip irrigation and other gardening books. Thanks, Robert

Gopher It - Baskets & All

Spring time and baskets are rollin’…into the ground. Gophers in the west (certainly around my home) have sprung from the womb and are seeking new territory. This means there’s a mass migration as each gopher tries to stake out it’s new home. Thus many gophers means plenty of damage to roots. In my neck of the woods, gardeners are “planting” wire baskets with the transplants inside. It seems to work, but not all the time. I lost an apple tree to a gopher who simply climbed over the wire and into a protected paradise of yummy rootlets. I spent hours in the USDA Ag. Library (the largest collection of ag. and hort. books in the country) looking for “the answer”. I finally found a report where the researchers wanted to capture live gophers. They built a “V”-shaped live trap with 10-inch-tall wire sides. The gophers simply crawled over the wire. Alas, my futile attempt at a four-inch exposure above the mulch didn’t save the apple tree. However, I learned a lot about roots after I dug up the roots of the apple tree. Nearly 90% were inside the two-foot wide by 24-inch deep wire basket. Most roots where eaten off just as they tried to leave the basket—as seen in the photo on the left. Here is one of the lone roots that escaped the greedy gopher mouths.

“BUY FROM THE SOURCE TO HELP KEEP WRITERS WRITING”


Let me know what you think. Visit my web site to learn about my new book on drip irrigation and other gardening books. Thanks, Robert

Healthy Roots

As mentioned in my book Roots Demystified, Change Your Gardening Habits to Help Roots Thrive, if led by available moisture and nutrition, a tree may tunnel its roots through soil space ranging from an area one-half wider than the dripline to as much as three times further. A deep sandy soil offers little resistance to growing roots and allows for root exploration of three or more times the width of the tree.

This oak tree has mulch out to the dripline of the tree. While not the ideal it sure is a great improvement over how most developers treat native trees. This is the best example I have seen. It is located at a public community center. The sign offers great educational advice.

Unlike the dying tree in the previous blog (3-24-10), this oak trees is thriving.

“BUY FROM THE SOURCE TO HELP KEEP WRITERS WRITING”


Let me know what you think.Visit my web site to learn about my new book on drip irrigation and other gardening books.NOTE: The comments section at the bottom of the post has disappeared. Click on the "___ Comments" button or the title under the "Blog Archives". Thanks, Robert

Concrete Kills

In my book Roots Demystified, Change Your Gardening Habits to Help Roots Thrive I talk about how important it is to allow the soil to breath for the best growth of roots. Roots with compaction or hardscape don't thrive. Here's a large, formerly beautiful, oak tree surrounded by a parking lot, driveway, sidewalk, and street. As the butchered pruning shows, the tree is rapidly dying over the past five years - a short period of time for an oak tree that can last for several hundred years or more. Such a glorious tree slowly dieing due to an anaerobic form of root bondage.

“BUY FROM THE SOURCE TO HELP KEEP WRITERS WRITING”


Let me know what you think.Visit my web site to learn about my new book on drip irrigation and other gardening books.NOTE: The comments section at the bottom of the post has disappeared. Click on the "___ Comments" button or the title under the "Blog Archives". Thanks, Robert

Shameless Self Promotion

Roots ain't sexy. But plants need them to be healthy.

Thus I wrote a book about how roots really grow and ways a gardeners can have a better garden via healthy roots - Roots Demystified, Change Your Gardening Habits to Help Roots Thrive.

Check out my web site for more information (sample pages) and how to order: www.robertkourik.com

The book has been listed in Publisher's Weekly. They receive 1500 books per month and only list 450.

The best news came from the Midwest Book Review (one of the top 4 book reviewers for librarians):

“Superbly written and thoroughly 'user friendly', ‘Roots Demystified’ is profusely enhanced with twenty-five illustrative graphics showcasing extraordinary illustrations of excavated root systems in their entirety. A compendium of practical, comprehensive, and exceptionally well organized information, advice, tips, and observations that will benefit novice gardeners and seasoned professionals alike, ‘Roots Demystified’ is an excellent and strongly recommended addition to personal, professional, academic, and community library Gardening/Agriculture/Horticulture reference collections and supplemental reading lists.”

Here's my speaking schedule for now. 

March 30th. - On the radio on Michelle Anna Jordan's show "Mouthful" along with the extraordinary gardener Kate Frey of Fetzer Garden fame (who has also won prizes at the Chelsea Garden Flower Show in the UK.) 7-8PM on KRCB 91.1, in Santa Rosa CA 90.9 both on the FM dial.

April 5th - Book signing at Copperfield's Books in downtown Sebastopol. 11AM to noon.

April 15th (after paying your taxes - it's free!) - Oakmont, the Berger Center. 10-11AM (email me for directions - rkourik@sonic.net)

May 3rd - Lecture at Harmony Farm & Garden Supply, Graton, CA 10-noon.

May 18th - Book signing at Sonoma Mission Gardens 1851 Craig Ave., Sonoma, CA 4-6PM. 

I hope to meet you at one of these events.