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Powerful Penetrating Roots

 
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What meadow plants will grow from seed and penetrate compacted soils? Burdock? Yes/no? What else? I ask because I may be rehabilitating a parking lot this year! I want plant pioneers to do the work of loosening things up.
Thanks!
 
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Burdock would definitely work and grow in hard compacted area as well as dock. I have a hard time recommending burdock though as at my place it is super prolific and the seed pods are a huge negative of the plant.
 
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Mullen is another good one. It seems to grow wherever the ground is hard.
 
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Yarrow and plantain come to mind - maybe with a little clover mixed in for some nitrogen fixing. Lightly mulching the seed with grass clippings or even hay will retain moisture to help germination.
 
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Julie Pastore wrote:What meadow plants will grow from seed and penetrate compacted soils? Burdock? Yes/no? What else? I ask because I may be rehabilitating a parking lot this year! I want plant pioneers to do the work of loosening things up.
Thanks!



Fortunately many meadow plants can penetrate compacted or heavy clay soils once they establish. The trick is to pick the right species that can do this and to create short-term conditions conducive to their establishing. The latter involves loosening the surface of any soil that's compacted so seeds that sprout have an easier time getting their roots started. Rototilling or harrowing is usually the best way to make that happen. A nurse crop also help with establishment. A nurse crop is basically a cover crop that will shelter the newly planted seeds without impairing their ability to grow by being too dense. I usually use an annual rye but there are many species that can fit this bill.

And as for matching plants with heavy clay soil, species that are native to most midwestern prairies are adept at handling those sort of conditions with relative ease. Part of the genius of meadow plants is that once they're established they can even thrive in difficult soils.  Echinacea purpurea, Heliopsis helianthoides, most Asclepias, Baptisia, Amsonia, Pycnanthemum, Silphium and Verbena, are some examples that pull this off with aplomb. Yarrow is definitely one such plant as well. I generally steer clear of burdock in meadows because of it's coarse appearance (I usually shoot for airier forms in meadow plants) and clingy burrs, but it is a very valuable plant – a delicious edible (gobo), a helpful medicinal, and birds love its seeds.  
 
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Dandelions seem to be among the first plants I ever see growing in cracks of pavement, so I reckon that with their Taproot, they manage to drill through soil pretty well.
 
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We bought the 3 abandoned lots behind us and garden them.  The center strip where they buried houses and covered in fill dirt are too hard to sink a shovel or pitchfork.  I smothered the grass and used a blend from prairie moon nurseries.  All of native meadow plants have deeper roots than grass.  Yellow dock, burdock, thistle and mugwort have also volunteered.  My happy finding though was that I could dig a hole for elderberry (with much difficulty) and they completely thrived.  They went from bare root to 15 foot monsters in a few short years!!!
 
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I'd get forage radish growing wherever you have soil compaction problems.

It's an annual and has powerful and deep-seeking taproots that will remain in the soil and rot the next year, enhancing the soil biology and waterinfiltration.

The foliage is lush and very high protein. I planted thickly a patch of soil and feed  thinnings to my chickens, who love it.

 
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Burdock and plantain both work where I live, as does red clover. I don't even try to dig burdock out from my garden beds any more -- just periodically chop and drop to add those deep soil minerals to my top soil.
 
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Dandelions have one of the deepest taproots per plant height ratio of anything.  They also help correct nutrient imbalances.
 
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Parsnips, which have a 2 foot fleshy root and which can be seeded by broadcasting, and oil seed radish are also good at breaking up hardpan.  Thistle grows prolifically in areas with lots of moisture, but it roots down to the hardpan and then horizontally for up to a couple feet -- which might require a century to correct the hardpan.
 
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I too started what is now my food forest as a meadow over dense clay soil.  Some species that I dispersed by seed for purposes of soil improvement that germinated well included wild chicory, white Dutch clover, mustard (still comes back yearly in great self-seeding swaths!  Very tasty in the fall), and daikon.
 
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The plant that I have read most about for this situation is daikon radish.  The daikon radish will also help with soil building health:

https://permies.com/t/7378/soil-building-daikon-radish

https://permies.com/t/42682/daikon-radish-soil-building
 
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I'm using Daikon radish a lot as a cover crop, and there are things it will and won't do here.

it does break up a good bit of the soil on top, maybe 3 - 4" , but once it hits that point it starts pushing up out of the ground instead of burrowing down.

That's not in what you think of as everyday sand, but a weird sand that packs together surprisingly well, making for a bit of a root penetration problem.
Nothing like plow pan, although you probably could cause that, or tight clay, but a bit of an issue still.
It's actually in demand locally for using as a base for cement slabs because of this packing together characteristic.

How about this....I'm guessing it's intended to be a garden area anyway so why not pile on a lot of compost and grow shallow rooted tasty things, and some stuff like the Daikons (which are tasty too, try the seed pods sometime)  until the compost and earthworms do the hard work for you. The Daikons would help the soil loosening process.
If it's clay, and you're going to add fertilizer,  you don't want to put any magnesium on it. That will make it worse.

You would probably want to tarp it initially for a month or so to kill whatever is there before adding compost, or at least some cardboard under the compost.

Read up on things to watch out for in compost, the main one being persistent herbicides that will  kill any veggies.

If anyone locally sells earthworms, or you know where to find some ( ask fresh water fisherman)  you could add some to jump start things.

Some others you could plant, which actually add to the fertility, one big, one small....

Goumi berry, autumn olive (possibly illegal or invasive wherever you are), silverberry (elaeagnus ebbingi) or any others in the elaeagnus family that have edible berries. These pull nitrogen from the air and make it available in the soil. The ebbingi don't drop their leaves so they're a possibility for a hedge. All these are large shrubs, some going to 12 - 15' high. The autumn olive are the most bulletproof and fastest growing. They've been seen thriving in places nothing else will grow and they propagate really easily from hardwood cuttings taken early spring. I would suggest named cultivars so you get tasty berries too.

Comfrey - this may be able to drill your soil. It goes deep seeking the other nutrients besides nitrogen and brings them topside as leaves fall off and return the goodies to the soil. Even without the leaf drop other plants seem to do better in their company. Low growing plant big leaves. In my local conditions it will dig through our compacted sand.

You might have to start them out on a mound of better dirt or compost/local dirt mix to give them a running start.

You could consider tree guilds using these two to both dig the soil and bring fertility.

That's what I'm working on, using what I know works well locally along with these two, in the hopes of eventually having self sufficient food plantings, some beds, some guilds.

One more thought....most of the grass type cover crops are deep rooted, things like rye, oats, etc. Which one you use depends a lot on where you are. I use hulless oats because the heat here coming into spring kills them off at the perfect time so that I don't have to do any work to terminate them. Perhaps where you are something is this well behaved.
I also plant a legume with the oats. Sugar snap peas lately. Yum!





 
Matthew Nistico
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Dave Bross wrote:I'm using Daikon radish a lot as a cover crop, and there are things it will and won't do here.

it does break up a good bit of the soil on top, maybe 3 - 4" , but once it hits that point it starts pushing up out of the ground instead of burrowing down.

That's not in what you think of as everyday sand, but a weird sand that packs together surprisingly well, making for a bit of a root penetration problem. Nothing like plow pan, although you probably could cause that, or tight clay, but a bit of an issue still. It's actually in demand locally for using as a base for cement slabs because of this packing together characteristic.


Fascinating description of your "hard pack" sand.  Never encountered anything quite like that.

I have also seen the same effect you describe with daikon in my clay soils: by season's end, about half of the radish is sticking above ground like a little white tower.  I've got no problem with that.  I just cut it off clean at the soil line, eat the top half, including the greens, and let the bottom half rot in the ground for soil improvement.  It's a win-win!

Dave Bross wrote:If anyone locally sells earthworms, or you know where to find some (ask fresh water fisherman)  you could add some to jump start things.


That might not hurt in order to accelerate things, but on the long scale it isn't necessary.  And I would worry how cost effective such a move would prove.  Depends on what's going on in your soil.  If there isn't enough organic matter, I'd guess most of your imported worms would either die off or migrate to greener pastures.

In my experience, when your soil is ready, the earthworms will come.  I don't know from where they come, but they do.  I had similar worries at the beginning on my own property, which after my own earth-moving efforts was denuded of top soil.  After a few years of despair with nary a worm to be found, one day I realized that they had arrived.  Now I can hardly transplant a tomato seedling without disturbing half a dozen earthworms.

I suppose it is all a factor of how hurried you are to see results and how much money you are willing to commit.

Dave Bross wrote:Some others you could plant, which actually add to the fertility, one big, one small....

Goumi berry, autumn olive (possibly illegal or invasive wherever you are), silverberry (elaeagnus ebbingi) or any others in the elaeagnus family that have edible berries. These pull nitrogen from the air and make it available in the soil. The ebbingi don't drop their leaves so they're a possibility for a hedge. All these are large shrubs, some going to 12 - 15' high. The autumn olive are the most bulletproof and fastest growing. They've been seen thriving in places nothing else will grow and they propagate really easily from hardwood cuttings taken early spring. I would suggest named cultivars so you get tasty berries too.

Comfrey - this may be able to drill your soil. It goes deep seeking the other nutrients besides nitrogen and brings them topside as leaves fall off and return the goodies to the soil. Even without the leaf drop other plants seem to do better in their company. Low growing plant big leaves. In my local conditions it will dig through our compacted sand.



Yes!  Both excellent species of which I've planted many.  I am an evangelist for goumi, and have written many posts singing it's praises on various permies threads.  Comfrey also has done well for me and is an old standby for land regeneration.

But the OP should consider both carefully relative to her goals for her parking lot rehabilitation job.  I have no idea what those goals might be.  But as much as I love goumi bushes, that is a big investment of space (they grow quite large!) and time (they grow fast, but your still talking about years for a woody perennial to establish) and money (assuming you're starting with transplants - if you have a source of free cuttings, then not so much).  If you can work these big bushes into the final site plan, then great!  Get started with them now, and your soil will thank you.  But if they're only a temporary expedient for soil improvement, later to be chopped, then probably more practical and cost effective to stick with seeding annual/biennial cover crops (radish, mustard, rye, oats, etc.).

Comfrey is an herbaceous perennial, so it establishes much faster.  And it would be easier to work around once the restoration phase has passed and the plantings for the final site plan begin.  But beware: you'd better love comfrey, because you'll never be rid of it.
 
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Julie Pastore wrote:What meadow plants will grow from seed and penetrate compacted soils? Burdock? Yes/no?

I had read SO much about daikon and was looking forward to it breaking up my clay soil but alas, as someone stated, it only grew a couple of inches down. 1 to 3 inches so no, it did NOT work on my hardpan either.

As to clay busting plants yes burdock. Its growing prolifically through my weeping bed which isn't good considering the length of the roots! I was chopping and dropping it there all season but its going into the garden this year! I've come to learn since how good the leaves are for your soil too. I'll have to lay that patch fallow for the season constantly chopping and dropping but that's ok. In the fall I'm planting winter rye.
Going through all this for one season should facilitate a tremendous improvement....one can only hope.

I will allow some burdock to go to seed so I can plant it in a different patch the next Spring, and on it goes.

I have comfrey on the grow too both varieties. One goes to seed the other doesn't. I wanted the 'invasive' seeding variety so I can save those seeds and move it around the property as well. I'm sure you know how great comfrey is for permaculture as a nitrogen soil feeding maniac. :)

I know this is an old thread but perhaps we can help someone.


 
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