Beginner Gardening: Raised bed taken over by invasive roots., 1 by maxjohnson

maxjohnson wrote:
I am a new gardener starting just this year and I think I'm paying a big price for buying poor soil for my raised beds. I apologize since this might be a long read and sorry for the impending noobness.

When I started making my raised bed for the first time, I didn't know what soil I should use, I bought a Home Depot in house brand called "Vigoro" Organic. As I learn more about soil in the coming weeks, I quickly realize they are extremely poor quality, they have very low pH (4), very heavy, and terrible at keeping water. The plants have a hard problem healthy roots since they are so heavy. You could water the soil as much as you want and they would still be dry. Even after adding expensive amendment like compost, rockdust, biochar, compost tea, my plants weren't doing well.

Mean while on the side I bought the Lambert OMRI certified potting soil which is also sold at Home Depot, and used them for container planting and in a separate bed for strawberries, all the plants are doing well with these. The soil was so soft and kept water very well. With them I could nurse leave-less dried up stick Goji berries plants to a state of growing prolific green leaves. I decided to use the Lambert soil in all raised beds, so what I did was chug away most of the Vigoro soil to the side, only leaving about 6 inches in the bottom of the bed as fillers, and the Lambert soil above.

What I didn't pay attention to was that the Vigoro soil seems to come with some type of invasive roots, they seem to be thicker in the bottom layer where the Vigoro soil was, now they are growing so fast they take over every part of the raise beds. I don't have enough experience to know what they are. They are very soft and thin, but very spongy if squeezed, but they are very prolific and found everywhere under the surface. They are very fragile and easy to break off, so they seem harmless, however since they're everywhere it is impossible to rid of them and I fear they might just get thicker over time and have a stranglehold on all the soil space. They are not part of any plants that I introduced to the soil.

I asked elsewhere on the internet and they told me it was wrong to put cardboard/landscape fabric in the bottom because the plant roots would have no where to go, and that the invasive roots could have came from outside since the soil couldn't just sprout roots. I moved in this house not too long ago, below my raised bed at lots of trash and cement, so I wanted to take caution and used landscape fabric and cardboard as a shield, especially from weeds. I do not believe the roots came from outside, but already existing, otherwise it could not have taken over all of the beds in only 3-4 months since almost every inched of the soil have these roots. But I could be wrong, so I look for input from more experienced gardeners. I don't believe the roots came from the Lambert soil since strawberries bed that only used Lambert soil have no traces of these invasive roots.

Right now I am in distress and enraged about this since I spent so much money on the soils itself and the amendments. Starting from scratch would very too costly, so I'm just gritting my teeth and grow my less valued vegetables there for now.

I guess it is less important to know exactly what the roots are, but to hear from more experienced gardener who had with this issue before and what action did you take. Are there tips to suppress invasive roots growth? It is okay for my vegetables to coexist with these invasive roots and still be healthy and thriving, or would there be negative impacts on their rhizome growth while the roots battling each other for room to grow? I have no intention of using any unnatural chemicals on my soil.

Whether if I am incorrectly attributing the roots problem to the Vigoro soil, it had been a terrible mistake for me as a first time gardener, and I initially bought them because I wanted to avoid using Miracle Gro due to their poor reputation, but looks like these are just as bad.

Thanks for reading. Any input would be helpful.

This message was edited Dec 14, 2014 3:42 PM