treevet

I agree with what Sean said about inspecting buttress roots or root crowns for various reasons. I just think if you want to aeriate or refract compacted soil why not used compressed water (spray rig/feed gun)? Dry out roots or moisten them? When the water is used or disapates or transpires the soil should be less compacted. As for soil ammendments, an earth auger on a Tanaka drill doing vertical mulching seems much easier for improving soil quality. As you mentioned what do you do with all the displaced soil? I ve used one a number of times and they make a huge mess and a tremendous amount of noise and would catagorize them as a gimmick in this application.