Root observation,

Hey all,

This afternoon, I was fixing some landscaping for a family member.
They had not been struggling to grow plants and wondering why they did not grow well.
They had been using weed matt, and putting this on top of clay, and cutting a hole with the plant and planting a few inches deep.
above the weed matt  some of the best fibrous roots with beautiful nodes were found because the weed matt made it dry and added air.

So I removed the weed matt, removed the plants, propagated them!
added mushroom compost, chicken manure and covered in wood chip and
replanted. this took me 45 minutes including the hardware store time!

they were not happy with me doing this and it cost me $57 to do this for them. but they will be enjoy the plants when they develop properly and the roots are not strangled and pruned by the weed matt.

I left the weed matt out, in an edge space of my garden, for a lot of the organics to fall off and not be wasted, the weather forecast says rain so, hopefully I can utilise nature to clean up the weed matt, then I will throw away the weed matt.

It does make me wonder, about applications to create environments for this fibrous roots to be used. and maybe weed matt, even if its essentially making a hard pan layer, might have some applications!

Hi Alex,

I did a similar thing 8 years ago. I volunteered 2 days a week for just a couple of hours each day at our local community center. In the backyard there were 10 probably 30 year old heirloom rose bushes that had slowly been dying for years. The whack job Director wanted me to 'Bring Them Back to Life and Make Them Thrive!' I discovered that they had been planted in rock hard clay (zero organic matter) with weed cloth above that and a layer of gravel on top of it all baking in the high desert sun! And the irrigation system hadn't worked properly for years so they were starving for water!

It took some time to haul away all the gravel. I'm an old lady. And when I pulled up the weed cloth.... I cried. I saw a huge, thick  'spider web' of super fine roots about 1 and ½ inches deep lying above the concrete dirt. These poor roses had suffered so much searching for water! I hauled in bags and bags of soil and dumped 4 inches of mulch on top of that and watered and watered and watered. And was amazed when 2 months later, in late summer they began to bloom again. They only bloomed for a couple of weeks but I was overjoyed! And the wackadoodle  Director wanted to know why they had stopped blooming! When I told him again and again that they needed more water and he needed to fix the irrigation system  he just insisted that they had plenty and I must be doing something wrong. I quit volunteering there.

He was fired 2 years later. And honestly I hadn't thought much about it until I read your piece 6 days ago. Yesterday I went back to the center to see what had happened. Thanks to some really good souls who followed in my footsteps the roses are now regularly watered and are thriving happily. It was so heartwarming to see. Thank you for your post. Thank you for reminding me. And I hope you get to see those plants thriving happily. That will be a great reward.

And I REALLY loved that you didn't want to waste the bits of good roots that Nature had created. I'm like that too. Absolutely nothing should be wasted especially not such a special thing that nature has created!

Spero Meliora my friend. Debbie

Debbie Ann wrote:
Yesterday I went back to the center to see what had happened. Thanks to some really good souls who followed in my footsteps the roses are now regularly watered and are thriving happily. It was so heartwarming to see. Thank you for your post. Thank you for reminding me. And I hope you get to see those plants thriving happily. That will be a great reward.
Spero Meliora my friend. Debbie

I am happy for you and am touched (for non English speaking people means I feel emotionally prompted).