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Hi,
I took over a plot last November / December it was heavily overgrown before I took it on and the kind people at the allotments applied weed killer all over it. This made it very easy to pull the majority of the weeds up which I did over the winter. I then roughly dug the beds over and left it for the frosts to break it down.
I have since been back to fork it all over but I noticed there are a mass of pencil thick black roots which appear dead - they are red / pink when cut through??, but with it being heavy clay they appear to be helping to keep the clay together in clods even more so than normal - my question is, do I need to remove the majority of the large roots or will they eventually break down and potentially improve the soil structure?
It seems to be taking an age to remove them and I'm getting a little concern time is starting to become against me I still have 24m2 left to fork over & de-root(not sure if that a word!?
)
I took over a plot last November / December it was heavily overgrown before I took it on and the kind people at the allotments applied weed killer all over it. This made it very easy to pull the majority of the weeds up which I did over the winter. I then roughly dug the beds over and left it for the frosts to break it down.
I have since been back to fork it all over but I noticed there are a mass of pencil thick black roots which appear dead - they are red / pink when cut through??, but with it being heavy clay they appear to be helping to keep the clay together in clods even more so than normal - my question is, do I need to remove the majority of the large roots or will they eventually break down and potentially improve the soil structure?
It seems to be taking an age to remove them and I'm getting a little concern time is starting to become against me I still have 24m2 left to fork over & de-root(not sure if that a word!?
)
I have removed 3 large bags from one of my 4m x 4m beds and I'm two thirds of the way through another! but I still have another 2 beds to go. Sounds like I need to remove as much as I can and keep a close eye on the weeds as and when they appear!
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