What is taking over my garden?

[JR05]

I made some raised garden beds last spring. I removed the sod below the gardens and did not put down plastic or anything. I dug down about a foot and then have 1 foot of raised garden. I use this garden last year and this year.

Here is my issue. I went to till the garden (by hand) today and found that one of my gardens has some roots that are basically taking over the garden. The main parts of the root are red and about 1/4 as thick as my pinky. The rest are very thin white tenticles that are spreading like crazy. Does anybody have any idea what this is and how to get rid of it? I did till it and pulled all of the stuff I could get. Here is a picture of one bunch I removed. with my wallet for scale.

[digitS']

I have some fairly small spruce trees near one garden.

Their roots look a lot like that. It has become rather difficult to deal with them in the bed nearest the 2 trees. I dig the bed out each year and they start coming back, probably, in a month.

That bed, which was once 4' wide, has shrunk to 18" and may as well disappear this coming year.

Evergreens near another little garden have not caused this much trouble. Their roots must be deeper in the soil and don't work their way so quickly into the beds.

Steve

[rainbowgardener]

I don't know what it is; a pile of roots is fairly non-descript. But they have to be roots of something. It seems like you should be able to trace the roots back to where they are coming from; just keep following them in the direction of getting thicker. I wouldn't think whatever it is could be too far away.