{"id":312,"date":"2013-11-17T14:34:16","date_gmt":"2013-11-17T22:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=312"},"modified":"2013-11-22T13:44:25","modified_gmt":"2013-11-22T21:44:25","slug":"battle-of-the-rose-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=312","title":{"rendered":"Battle of the Rose Roots"},"content":{"rendered":"

I should have learned from experience. Years ago, I wondered why plants near a hedge in my Palo Alto garden weren\u2019t doing so well, in spite of soil amendments, regular watering, and other tender loving care. Investigating closer, I found that below the soil surface was a dense mass of tiny white roots. The nourishment stealer was a Banksia <\/em>rose that had flourished in the hedge for fifty years.<\/p>\n

You would think I\u2019d learn and remember. But no \u2026 As we designed a deer-fenced vegetable garden for our new home on the edge of the forest in Mendocino, we decided that a covered gate, an English lych-gate, would be a charming touch. And wouldn\u2019t it be romantic to have a rose climbing over it? I\u2019ve always been fond of \u201cMrs. Cecille Brunner\u201d<\/a> with its exquisite miniature pink buds.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

“Mrs Cecille Brunner” pruned and tidy for the winter.<\/p><\/div>\n

I planted a climbing \u201cMrs. B\u201d in a half wine barrel just inside the gate, out of the deer\u2019s reach. Years passed. At a friend\u2019s house I admired another pink climber. She told me its name, \u201cSeven Sisters,\u201d and offered a cutting. The local legend, she told me, was that this rose was originally brought to the Northern California coast by a Russian princess in the early 1800s. Possibly she was the well-born wife of Ivan Kuskoff, commander of the Russian American Company fur trading post at Fort Ross<\/a>, whose house is still standing, and is now a National Historic Landmark<\/a>. According to the story, Madame Kuskoff gave cuttings of \u201cSeven Sisters\u201d<\/a> to friends, who gave cuttings to friends, and so it moved up the coast. I see it everywhere in the gardens of old coast homes, and have met the woman who gave my friend her cutting.<\/p>\n

But I digress. Needless to say, my cutting of \u201cSeven Sisters\u201d also found a home in a wine barrel inside my fenced garden. It became a yearly task to prune these enthusiastic climbers before they totally blocked the sun from the vegetables.<\/p>\n

\"Seven<\/a>

“Seven Sisters” reaches for the sky.<\/p><\/div>\n

This year \u201cSeven Sisters\u201d decided to bloom again just as I was getting out my pruning shears, so she\u2019s still a wild tangle.<\/p>\n

But tidy on top doesn\u2019t mean disciplined underneath. This season I noticed that the vegetables in raised beds near the roses were stunted and sad. One scoop with the shovel showed the cause. Nothing for it but to dig out the entire bed.<\/p>\n

\"Rose<\/a>

Rose roots poke through the hardware cloth floor of the raised bed.<\/p><\/div>\n

There\u2019s a layer of hardware cloth on the bottom to keep out the gophers (that\u2019s another story). I\u2019m hoping a couple of layers of weed cloth will deter the rose roots, at least for a few years. My friend, a Master Gardener, laughed when I told her. \u201cYou\u2019re the eternal optimist, aren\u2019t you?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I should have learned from experience. Years ago, I wondered why plants near a hedge in my Palo Alto garden weren\u2019t doing so well, in spite of soil amendments, regular watering, and other tender loving care. Investigating closer, I found that below the soil surface was a dense mass of tiny white roots. The nourishment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,34,54,59],"tags":[161,408,410,42,160],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":319,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions\/319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}