I have a pine 20 ft away from the north side of my garden and it's roots have invaded it. If you dig a deep enough trench along the garden perimeter you might find out of your maple tree roots are invading, 10' is pretty close.

I can't believe that it only occurred to me today - maybe it's the trees? When I dig in the garden I do come across very small roots that are in the garden (about 3/4" in diameter) that I have to slice through.

I have a great open spot in the yard that currently has play structure occupying its space. One more year and my youngest should be over it. I will probably transfer my garden to that area. No trees.

Thanks for the input.

You don't make any mention of any nutrient supplements added to your garden. So do you feed your plants and if so with what? Plants can't do well without a reliable source of nutrients. Have you ever had your soil tested?

Dave

I use my compost and have added manure a couple of times. I have a test kit that I bought in the fall. I will get on that in a couple of weeks. I hope test kit is sufficient. The brand is luster leaf rapitest soil test kit.

As well as the root issue don't the trees shade the garden?

No. It has full sun until 3pm.

1. Home test kits are pretty much junk - they do not provide accurate readings. If you need your soil tested you need to get a professional lab test done.
2. Compost and manure do not provide a very strong source of nutrients - that's why they're considered soil conditioners or amendments rather than fertilizers. And veggies can consume a lot of nutrients so it is very likely that you do need to add something more concentrated. Also, the tree roots will also grab and hog both soil nutrients and soil moisture and essentially starve the smaller plants.

1. " Also, the tree roots will also grab and hog both soil nutrients and soil moisture ad essentially starve the smaller plants."
2. Pretty much what I was thinking. I think I will do a smaller section this year and really think of moving it to a new area. Thanks.

Try fertilizing your plants this year, too, and see how the plants respond to that. Maybe even do some plants with your usual routine and others with fertilizer. Occasional compost and manure additions likely do not supply the plants with enough nutrients to grow well.

Not clear exactly what the problem is. You don't have luck getting vegetables. Are you getting abundant foliage? Are the plants not growing? Are they dying? Because of your regular addition of compost, I'm inclined to believe it isn't a nutrient problem, as while compost is pretty pathetic as a short term nutrient, it's has some effect as a long term one. But if you want optimum production, you'll have to add real fertilizer.

Ten feet away from a tree doesn't sound like a competition problem, especially if you really dig in the compost every year. As in, tilled deep. If you do, ain't no tree roots gonna compete with your plants in any given growing season. What's growing ten feet on the other side of the tree? Grass perhaps? Or is that area dead as well?

But I agree that a professional soil test is worth your while. Where are you? It could be just ten bucks or so.

We have a thread going here about alleopthy of oaks, and silver maple is alleged to have allelopathic affects as well. As in, the tree will actively try to poison things growing close to it. Ten feet seems like it might be a safe distance though. Just google allelopathy and "silver maple".

I notice the root systems are very small. Nothing grows to a full size and there isn't much foliage. The most I had luck with is kale. In the past I have put in carrots, spinach, lettuce, green and yellow beans, beets, zucchini, pumpkin, cucumber, watermelon, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage and celery. None of these were full or produced much. I am in Eastern Ontario and I plant in May. I haven't tilled the ground in 10 years. I manually turn it each spring. The other side of the trees is full shade so I have hostas. They grow okay. Maybe it sounds like fertilizer is my problem.

Well, manually turning it is going to rip up any tree roots in your bed. So I'll guarantee you that competition with tree roots isn't your problem. But I have a bed where I never add fertilizer (well, occasionally a kick of nitrate from lawn fertilizer), just compost, and it produces well. If the hostas grow OK, allelopathy sounds like it isn't the answer. You may have a serious soil nutrient deficiency that is harder to fix, that hostas tolerate. Get a real test. Of course, you can just take the machine gun approach, and just throw lots of wide-spectrum fertilizer on, and see what happens.

Since the roots of a maple tree can extend yards away from the base of the tree and the roots are known to invade any enriched soils areas, as well as being nutrient and water hogs. 10' is nothing to a mature established maple!! If you rip out or disturb the roots, they will be right back - trees replace feeder roots continuously. There are discussion on this in the Trees and Landscape Design forums all the time.......it is very difficult establish any planting within the root zone of any maple!! In fact, they are notorious for this issue. It would not be my first choice of location for any productive vegetable garden!

You can get around this by supplying extra TLC in terms of regular/routine fertilization and plenty of water. But I would seriously consider moving your garden to a more desirable and less maple haunted location :-)

Thanks for all the help. I will get the soil tested, apply the proper fertilizers and if it is a bust, I have my new locations ready!

If you can still prepare a new area this year, why not try planting both it and this existing bed, and treating them both the same? That way you could see if the maple roots (or other aspects of the location) were really a problem.

But my hunch is that you're right, and the maple tree is just keeping all your love for itself. In my experience, silver maples in particular will out-compete everything in their dripline and a fair bit beyond, unless it's moss.

I have a lot of experience with oaks. My cherry tomatoes are 6 feet away from a 100-year old tree. Oak sprouts come up regularly in the bed, but the bed gets well dug every year, and the cherries go gangbusters every season. But maples might be different.

I do note that silver maples have notoriously shallow roots.

All maples have notoriously shallow roots!!

Well, I am going to move my garden. I have bricks surrounding my current garden and will transfer them over for the outside wall and I think I will go lasagna garden. I will use my grass clippings, my saved up leaves, all my unprocessed compost and I will transfer the top six inches off my current garden. I had a friend come over and she said I have really good soil - I did the mason jar test and then pH test.

Here is a question, I have a lot of creeping charlie in my grass. Do you think it will be a nightmare to use my grass clippings? Or would it end up composting in the pile? I am also comprehensive about not breaking up the ground underneath as we had previously done some yard work and that area is extremely compacted.

I encourage you to consider building a raised bed using an impermeable bottom that can prevent tree roots from entering. I have a small yard surrounded by maples. I have found my only success by growing in large containers. I tried establishing a 4’ by 4’ very deep (2.5 feet) raised bed at the one point in my garden that is at least 30 feet from any tree. I filled it with rich compost, quality potting soil and mulched pine bark fines. The first year, I was able to harvest several beef steak tomatoes from it. But every year after that, I had diassappiinting yields. When I dug up the pile, I found a huge tangle of tree roots occupying the bottom half of the soil. I have been growing Tomatoes in 25-gallon smart pots using the same soil mix, and they are very productive.