About Root Zone

The root zone is the band of soil where a plant actually drinks, usually the top foot or so for vegetables and lawns and a wide, shallow disk under a tree. Water that never reaches it is wasted, and water that sits in it too long drowns the roots. That band gives the site its name and most of its questions.

Root Zone writes for people who water by hand, by hose or by a small timer: home gardeners, allotment holders, owners of a lawn and a couple of trees, anyone with a raised bed and a dry month ahead. The pieces cover when and how much to water, the signs of too much and too little, what a rain sensor or a soil moisture probe can tell a timer, how tap water, softened water and chlorine affect plants, soil tests, compost and mulch, and the drought and climate patterns that decide how hard a summer will be.

How the pieces are written

A date heads every piece, and the facts in it are the facts of that day. Rainfall records, water restrictions and plant recommendations change, so the date tells a reader how far to trust a figure before checking it again.

Sources are named in the text. Horticultural claims are checked against a university extension service, a national agency or published research, and a figure always says where it came from and when. Where water and electricity meet, or where fertilizer and pesticide labels apply, the piece says so plainly.

No piece carries an author’s name. The site runs no advertising, nothing on its pages executes in the browser or leaves a cookie behind, and the short-lived server log it keeps is described on the privacy page. A mistake that is reported and confirmed is fixed in the piece where it appeared; the address for that is on the contact page.

Where to get help

Root Zone answers no individual questions about a garden. These do:

• Ask Extension passes a written question about plants, soil or pests to an extension specialist at a land-grant university, often one in the asker’s own state.
• 811 is the free call-before-you-dig service. A few working days before digging for a tree, a fence post or a buried line, it arranges for buried utilities to be marked.
• The National Pesticide Information Center at Oregon State University answers questions about pesticides by phone, email or chat, including what to do after a spill or an exposure.
• The local water utility is the place to ask about watering days, drought restrictions and any rebate on rain sensors, smart timers or replacing turf.