the unvisibale part of the tree.

''The part of the trees that was less researched is the roots-why because that involved with hard work of digging'' we were told in the course of tree biology in extremely interesting lecture about roots.As I was writing this week about the use of root barrier -It made me think about my knowledge and experience about roots. Trees rots are very interesting as they are so varied with their size, smell, big ball of tiny roots or small ball of thick roots, sometimes very deep and sometimes just shallow, Nearly always hidden from our eyes.In the last part of my army service I worked in a kibutz garden (its like one big park that the houses are inside the park. I managed and worked in a 12 workers team . as there were few new just built up neighbourhood we made new gardens we installed irrigation systems(1000 pop-up sprinklers), planted turf and plants, but also transferred few mature trees to this area to make it look better and as part of thinning the area they were planted. we dug a lot in that year(1995) many huge ‘STRELITZIA nicolai’, I remember the very sandy soil that the size of the grains was bigger than usual sugar grains. This plant had very thick and soft roots.see photographa good way of digging trees that I used a lot during the years was to dig a wide deep trench around the root ball and than with high pressure water pipe (any pipe when the thumb cover the end to create water pressure), cutting the soil under the root ball and discovering the deep roots and cutting these roots.I remember digging many palm trees, citruses, ‘ficus benjamina ‘and more.Few of the ‘ficus’ family members are well known for the roots and I saw cases that their roots found in hundreds foot distance ,inside drainage systems and even inside houses lifting tiles.(the fig tree is from that family but got very non aggressive root ball. are well known for their roots. In the gardens I worked there were few huge trees that constantly damaged the drainage system but as this are great trees It seems like the homeowners were happy to accept the trees with all the cost that was involved.When I asked to check why in one area the drip irrigation stopped working .I cut the pipe and found very long root of an olive tree that manage to get through the hole of the dripper and than grow all along the pipe.Few facts about roots:1. In many trees cutting them will encourage the roots to develop new shoots from he ground, some trees roots will die and rot after few years and some may continue growing.2. Roots from different trees can connect to each other and continue growing sharing their systems.( I heard abut a case that a gardener tried to poison roots of one tree and caused to death of tow other trees from that reason)3. The ratio of natural hormones in the root is different from the rest of the tree(the root producing many hormones) and its one of the rezones why damaging the roots can harm the tree.4. When the tree grows: it grows the roots and than the rest of the tree and than again and again.5. One commercial way to make impressive bonsai look is to wash the soil from the top part of trees with attractive shape root when still grow in pot and plant them outside. This required knowledge of trees and area. I used a verity of ‘brachichton’ as a sculpture in one garden I made result was stunning. (I have no photographs)

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