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Webster, NY

I've been reading a few of the diary's and it seems many growers place boards around the plants to prevent the soil from compacting. It seems that might happen even with the boards. How important is this? Thanks for the help....

6/18/2001 9:26:13 AM

canal winchester ohio

As far as importance I think it ranks up there with proper pruning & watering. I was loosing some soil around the plant this weekend, I was 5 ft from the base & I seen some fine hairline roots all the way out there. Now when you are trying to get as much water & fert. as possible to the plant you can see how important all these roots are. The boards do not prevent total compaction but it does help spread out the compression, so they do help a lot. hope this helps...........Paul

6/18/2001 9:37:33 AM

Lake Stevens, WA, USA

I "excavate" my plants each fall to see just how big their root systems grew during the season. I have progressively paid more attention to growing bigger root systems over the past 3 years, and I am quite certain that soil compaction can be an issue. Last year I dug up my plant and noticed something very interesting.......I didn't use walkboards last year, and I noticed that in heavy traffic areas of my patch, the tap roots still grew, and some actually grew quite long, but they didn't spread out much, they just grew straight down. In areas of the patch where I hardly walked at all, I noticed that the tap roots were a bit longer, but more importantly, they were much more extensive, that is to say, the main tap root had many, many thin, long secondary roots coming off of it, some as much as a foot long. The secondary roots that came off the tap vines in the compacted areas were barely an inch long.

This year I tilled my patch 3 different times as deeply as possible, and I am ONLY walking on the walkboards. In my opinion it is easily worth the extra effort.

6/18/2001 10:55:17 AM

Webster, NY

Thanks for the information. I wouldn't have initially thought it would be a big deal, but I think tonight I'll be placing walkboards around.

6/18/2001 12:47:37 PM

Herndon, VA

I let my backyard plants grow through the lawn, which is in hard clay soil. As David previously mentioned, the tap roots were several inches long, but were there few if any secondary roots. In my remote patch I use boards. --Bruiser

6/18/2001 1:50:19 PM

CT

I was digging a trench 1 foot in front of my 5ft vine and hit the last 4 inches of root. The roots only came from the stump and 1st leaf node at the time. (The plant had gone over a mound and was mostly in the air.)
I found roots 5 feet behind the plant as well(sprayed water hard). So my plant with a 5 foot vine had a circle of roots around it the radius of the vine. Thats why walking on boards is important.
I believe boards spread out the pounds of preasure per square inch keeping the soil loose and roots from being crushed or snapped under ground.
Healthy roots= healthy plant=giant pumpkin
Oh, and this is just my opinion. LOL

6/18/2001 11:02:27 PM

Choctaw, OK

I was wondering since i do not have a huge supply of boards to use to lessen soil compaction, could i use bricks? I have many bricks my mom has not used yet....i would think they would be ok if spaced out and close enough together for me to get around......do you think that would work to lessen soil compaction? any opinions or insights would be appreciated. Thanks

Case

6/20/2001 1:14:11 PM

South Hill, Virginia

Case, that brings up an interesting point. Is it better to have a lighter compaction in a larger area or a heavier compaction in a smaller area. Suppose you were using boards (for example, let's say a 2x8x12) and assume that your weight was always evenly distributed along the entire surface area of the board. An area of 1152 square inches would be compacted along top layers of the soil. Suppose you put bricks under this 2x8x12 every couple of feet. The the area compacted would be the sum surface area of the bricks (approximately 224 square inches) and since the weight was distributed across a smaller surface the soil would be compacted deeper in those areas. Of course the areas where there were no bricks would receive no compaction at all (from human traffic). Alot would depend on where you placed the bricks and where your plant was trying to grow roots. My walking boards have sections of 1 inch pvc "feet" beneath them every 2 feet. When I walk on them the board doesn't seem to flex much and touches the ground between the "feet" very little if at all. I would think that these small areas of heavy compaction are easier for the roots to navigate around than large areas of a somewhat lighter compaction....that is my theory anyway.

6/20/2001 2:19:22 PM

canal winchester ohio

I would go with the boards . If you pick up your boards after you walk on them , take a small shovel and rake the surface you will see that just the upper crust of the soil is compacted whereas with bricks if you are very heavy as I am ( 265 lbs) they go way down into the soil. I also have one other advantage , with size 15 EEE shoes I have built in snowshoes............Paul

6/20/2001 2:54:37 PM

Liverpool , England

Yo Dave,
I read a few years back that a grower used snowshoes when walking on his soil.Said it worked for him.

Alun

6/20/2001 8:50:01 PM

western Kentucky

Maybe we should drive stakes deep into the soil and place the boards on them. That way there would hardly be any soil compaction at all. And I am sure that the pumpkins roots would have no trouble moving around the stakes. It would be like a little table with 3 inch legs. I was going to try it this year but decided that it would be too hard leveling out the top of the stakes.

Justin

6/21/2001 1:01:38 PM