Hi, I've been clearing out an ignored corner of my garden and discovered that the soil is FULL of periwinkle & horsetail roots, plus some from dandelions, a nearby bitter cherry, a rose bush, and even a few clusters of bluebells I forgot to remove last month. I've been driving myself crazy trying to filter & pick all of the roots out of each scoop of dirt. But, since I've got SO much soil that I'll need to pick through (or replace), I'm starting to wonder just how necessary or useful the process really is. I seem to remember that pieces of horsetail grow into new plants (so those'll be important to remove), but what about the other plants I mentioned?? Do I have to be as picky or will their broken/detached roots simply decompose in the soil, without growing new leaves or bulbs etc? Thanks for all of your help.
vinca (periwinkle) will root from pieces, i think. dandelions have tap roots and you need to get the whole thing to keep it from regrowing - getting the whole root is hard to do, too. the rose bush can just be moved to a new location - anything left shouldn't sprout. that's the little bits i'm talking about...if you leave the main root there, it will sprout new growth.
This is of course too late now, but you could have saved your self a lot of trouble, if you had sprayed the still growing plants with Round-Up or such and let is sit a week or two. That stuff has to be absorbed through the actively growing green of the plant and you have to give it time to penetrate to- and kill the roots. I am no friend of chemicals in the garden, but this is a time, when the application is warranted.
Thx guys. Sounds like I've got a nasty combo of weeds. Yay. As for your recommendation to spray, Olafhenny: Thanks, but I'm pretty sure that herbicides & pesticides are banned here in the GVRD. More important, though, is that I'm firmly against the use of any man-made chemicals in the garden. I don't use fertilizers or additives, only compost & leaf mold. I don't use slug bait, ant traps, or bug spray - choosing instead to wrap my fav plants in copper and to remove indiv pests by hand (& then 'donate' them to my neighbours, hehe). I prefer to have smaller tomatoes and less vigorous flowers in exchange for the knowledge that my cats can lick their paws and I can eat my berries without ingesting toxic chemicals. Have you ever read about Round-Up's sordid history or Monsanto's evil ways?? Now THAT'S scary. I'd rather pick out roots or hack away at Japanese knotweed any day... ;) But thanks for the suggestion anyway - I really do appreciate your help even though you've also confirmed joclyn's alarming news... Guess I'll continue pick pick picking away at this. I'm thinking of rigging up some kind of giant salad spinner to help me separate roots from soil so I don't have to pick'em out one by one. I just want to finish this mundane chore so I can get on with the fun of real gardening. Sigh.
You can do that, or get something like a giant sieve or screen - the kind of thing archaeologists use to separate pottery from soil. They work just as well on weed roots, and the process is hugely fast - it goes a shovel at a time.
