Soft white roots overrun raised bed soil needs advice.

9 years ago

Hello, I am a new gardener. I made an initial mistake when I started by buying the Vigoro organic garden soil. They are very heavy, terrible at holding water (you can water them as much as you want and it'll stay dry), and had very low PH.

After learning my lesson I relegated the Vigoro soil to the bottom 6inch of my raise bed as fillers. I filled the rest on top with Lambert organic soil which are OMRI certified. They are very light, soft and hold water very well. The plants are very healthy with the Lambert soil.

Today I dug deep into my raised bed and found there are many soft white roots taken over my entire raised bed, they were not there in the beginning, I had double layers of landscape fabric and one layer of cardboard in the bottom of my beds before adding soil. And these roots do not exist in my garden soil outside the raised bed, I don't think they come from the Lambert soils since they are not apparent on the top layers.

I strongly believe whatever they are they came from the Vigoro soil which were very poor quality soil to start with. I am fearing whatever they are they will grow very thick and take over, which will make it difficult for my vegetables to thrive.

I don't know what they are, I included a photo although I'm not sure it'll be helpful. They do not grow into any plants but propagated over the entire soil. Right now I am infuriated. I wonder if I should chuck all of the soils in all my raised beds and start over fresh. Just looking for ideas from more experienced members on what to do in this situation. Thanks.

This post was edited by maxjohnson on Sun, Dec 7, 14 at 18:17

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Comments (5)

lazy_gardens
9 years ago
What plants - especially trees - are within 30-40 feet of your raised beds.

The potting soil can't sprout roots without plants to support them, but a nearby plant can and will invade the bed.
ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
9 years ago
NEVER ...EVER ... use landscape cloth ..

and NEVER ... bury it ...

of course there are roots on top of it ... where else will they go??? .. they arent going DOWN.. thru it... see the conundrum????

it is said.. a tree can be twice as large below ground.. as above.. you might double the number in the previous reply.. when looking for the culprit ... same with shrubs... though on a smaller scale ....

ken
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babat_print
7 years ago
I also have this problem throughout my garden; how do I get rid of it. I am afraid it is going to choke my young fruit trees.
babat_print
7 years ago
I have a lot of eucalyptus trees growing along the fence of the units next door. I have a passion-fruit growing in a pot and it was matted over with the white roots; the pot was on a concrete slab so the roots could not have travelled from the tree. A friend of mine said the Chinese pay money to buy these roots as it is good for the soil but I believe they are choking the young trees including my passion fruit although it is not dead. I made a raised garden and placed a weed protector half a meter high on the sides yet the raised garden is full of it and it has attached itself to the weedmat.
maxjohnson
Original Author
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
This was long ago and I've moved on since. I just accept there are lots of trees around and break their roots when I go to dig holes for new plants. I don't believe in putting layers in the soil, unless it's decomposes, looking back it was stupid to put landscaping cloth in the soil. I do back to eden style gardening now and mulch everything.