What to do with root-riddled area
CazzieT
Posts: 74
We have just cut down and poisoned the stumps of 6 mature aspens at the bottom of a large garden which were making gardening a misery with their suckers coming up all over the place. The whole area, 50 or more square metres around where the trees were, is both perennially damp and full of their roots, making it extremely difficult to plant even a few bulbs let alone dig big enough holes for large plants. We're in the process of designing this space and just want to keep it very informal but the question is what do we do with the ground? It's always quite a damp area, currently rather muddy and covered with leaves, though it becomes a bit more dry and quite grassy in the summer when my husband mows it. Can we use a special lawn seed for those areas where we don't want to plant and is it necessary to dig over before adding topsoil? If so, would a rotovator cope with all the roots (as I'm sure my spade wouldn't)? Ideas gratefully received.
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The trouble with rotavating is that where there are perennial weeds, the rotavator chops the roots into bits, and each bit grows another weed. Since your trees were suckering, you might find you'd just propagated them by root cuttings. Trees suck a lot of water out of the ground, so you may find the ground is wetter without them. On the plus side, roots come out of wet ground easier than dry. Is there room to get a mini digger in to get the roots out?
Thanks for your reply. I'm hoping that the roots/suckers will eventually die from the ecoplug-glyphosate poisoning they've had (apparently that's what is supposed to happen) and that probably won't be until the spring so I wouldn't be interfering with them until after then. It is possible to get a mini digger in though I'd rather not go to that expense if I can avoid it. The root network will be huge now so I wondered if I could just leave them there to die and rot and build up the soil level above them since I'm not looking to do any complex planting.