New garden - tree roots everywhere
springfieldbean
Posts: 10
Hi all,
I recently moved to a house with my first proper garden, and I'm having a lot of problems with digging any viable plant beds because of the huge ash tree roots everywhere. The ground is also very stony, which doesn't help.
It's a medium sized garden, with about 8 ash trees stumps scattered around it, most of which are sprouting, despite the fact that the stumps are black and crossed where the previous owners obviously tried to kill them.
A couple of the smaller ones I've managed to dig out but the remaining ones are too big for me to manage (I'm talking a good 10 inches diameter). So I've done my best to kill them with stump killer, and I'll just have to put up with the stumps remaining there.
The thing that's really bothering me now is that the ground is riddled with roots - big roots about 6 inches in diameter, which I can't remove, or dig around. Within inches of everywhere I try to dig I just hit roots. Has anyone got any ideas about dealing with this? 
Posts
You can get a firm in to grind the stumps. Otherwise the only thing is to dig out the roots and use weedkiller on the re-growth.
If you don't want to remove the roots, the only alternative is to make raised beds.
Ash seedlings get everywhere so I would advise anybody who finds a seedling ash in their gardens to remove it sooner rather than later.
Ok, thanks both
I won't give up!