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Root Barrier for Raised Beds
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Posted by cindadancer 6B (My Page) on Tue, Aug 24, 10 at 8:15
Hi everyone,
I have built a raised bed from cedar and am planning to place it in my yard in a section that has very vigorous maple tree roots running through the entire section I plan to use. They are under the soil, of course, but I anticipate that the maple roots will happily invade my new bed. It's an ideal spot in other ways, so I would really like to be able to use this area despite the root issues.
I'm looking for a good root barrier material. From my research it looks as though landscape fabric may be ineffective and biotech root barrier fabric may inhibit the roots of the vegeys I intend to plant (as the product I found releases trifluralin above and below the surface of the fabric). I know that commonly this fabric is installed vertically, but I'm not sure I'm up for that level of effort! I'd prefer a material I can attach to the bottom surface of the bed.
Any suggestions for me? Thanks for your input! |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Root Barrier for Raised Beds
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| Cinda, You're probably gonna have some invasion from the tree roots no matter how hard you try. However, I've used both weed cloth and flattened cardboard boxes as root barrier and have found no real difference in them except that the boxes actually break down and improve the soil somewhat. I still get grass and other plants that try to break through the boxes. Have you thought about doing true "raised bed" gardening? My first SFG was up on legs and looked a lot like a pool table when I took pics of it. |
RE: Root Barrier for Raised Beds
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Lissa,
Thanks for your input. I'm going to keep researching, there's gotta be an answer to this problem. I wonder if a combination of BOTH landscape fabric & cardboard would work. Too bad I didn't keep the corner supports longer, I could have used them as supporting legs and then built a bottom to each bed to make it into a table. Oh, well, too late now. |
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