g'day clare, not that much that you can do about invasive roots from plants outside of teh garden beds, apart from maybe put in a root barrier between them and the garden area. the root barrier is a rubber based mat that gets inserted into the ground like a retaining wall to prevent roots from near by plants from entering a given area. probably not going to be cheap but should be effective. do a google or such for root barriers in your area and try to be sure to select someone who knows exactly what to do. they usualy need to cut a trench into the soil to slide the barrier into this i have seen can be dones using a jet of water to cut the trench. len Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

lastly (I promise!) here is an overall pic of the tree. It's raining out so it was hard to get good lighting, I hope it's ok. Oh, and I meant to add - do you think I can take anything besides the original sucker off this year without over stressing the tree? My reading says to wait until mid August or winter during the dormant time, no problem there - but I want to make the tree healthier, not stress it. Thank you! This post was edited by coatfetish on Fri, Apr 19, 13 at 9:46

Darkcyde, the light levels at this time are very poor where plants are concerned. In winter, they go into dormancy and do not need the water, nor the light so much. As light levels begin now to increase, you can expect your sapling to put on new growth....as little as it is. There's nothing wrong in starting an outside plant indoors as long as you give it some sort of natural habitat it would otherwise enjoy outside. Don't let the plant dry out, but when you water, water to drainage and dump the excess after a reasonable period of time. Don't let the water be drawn back up. Watering with distilled water. Was that info given you by someone who has views on regular community treated water. The 'treated' I take is your town's water is fluoridated. So what, most communities think its good for the kid's teeth. As far as fluoride damaging a small tree, I doubt it has had the time to have an effect and besides, just leaving the water to sit overnight and gain room temperature, is sufficient. Salts build-up in soil is a long-term thing, it doesn't happen overnight. Don't worry about it. Brown tips on plants can be usually traced to one or two possible causes: light...and or overwatering. You would know whether you are giving the plant too much water. Remember, it can only use so much water through winter...it should be actively growing to use such water. Light. Light at this time is very low....not until well into February is the intensity of light sufficient to push growth. I suspect what growth you have now is being pushed by your feeding it. Plants don't need feeding in winter, albeit very minimally, because they are not growing. Sunlight influences growth. Since light levels are so low, growth is not wished. So, no more feeding the plant until spring and new growth is in evidence. Water only when the plant needs it...don't put it on any schedule. Let the plant dry down between waterings and when you water, water always to drainage and dump the excess. The new growth in spring will change those brown tips to green ones. Whether you continue to buy distilled water is up to you. I don't believe its needed. When plants have a definite problem due to the water issue, then you can consider buying the more expensive stuff. Until the problem is one of water type, I would use the straight stuff and let it get to room temperature overnight.

Sorry about not checking back sooner. Many thanks to everyone for your answers. I had entered the website's name in Google, kudzu9 - but not the word "scam" along with it. Of course what came back to me was all the wonderful stuff written by the website itself. Thank you for supplying the missing link, kudzu9. Looks like I shall be installing WOT. Thank you EmmaR and owbist (And I will be spam checking for a while.) Now for some worry-free playing.