George Shirley wrote:
On 1/19/2016 9:28 AM, Terry Coombs wrote:

Fruit trees - mine have been in the ground for 1 and 2 years , they aren't
doing so well. Suggestions for a fertilizer that's eco-friendly ? These have
never had anything but a little fish emulsion last summer , and I'd like to
see them grow more , they haven't gottan any bigger since they were planted

what kind of fruit trees? are they on grafted rootstock?
how were they planted? how much light do they get? how
much water? soil conditions?


We have the same problem, a kumquat and a fig tree in the backyard. We
had to dig holes in the gumbo clay and I'm afraid we didn't dig the
holes wide enough or deep enough. The trees are growing very slowly but
are still producing a decent crop of fruit. We usually add a little
composted cow manure every few months and that helps.

At our former home we had very deep loam soil from eons of tree leaves
falling on what had, a long time ago, been a sand dune (think ancient
bottom of the Gulf of Mexico). Fruit trees shot up like they were on
steroids there. I miss that soil and am willing to bet that under that
five feet of clay in the back there is another ancient sea bed that
would have done the job. Albeit that the clay was laid down to keep us
from having to pay for gubmint flood insurance.

I'm thinking of devising something that I could drive down around the
trees to penetrate the clay some more and then add fertilizer of some
sort to help the roots spread wider and deeper.

i've seen various methods for planting fruit trees in
difficult conditions (read Sepp Holzer's works sometime ).

once the tree is already in i suppose you could go
back and gently dig down close to the tree to find the
roots and then trench outwards through the clay and then
fill that trench in with better quality soil. (it would
look like an asterisk or the spokes of a wheel). the roots
will follow that trench outwards. you'll have to keep
topping it off as the organic material decays, but it
should help as long as the slope is not towards the
tree (it should be level -- clay will eventually soak
up any extra water in there).

in the future the much easier method is to just make a
pile of the best soil you can including plenty of good
organic materials and plant into that without doing much
digging. the tree will do much better and you can keep
adding organic materials around the tree as the pile
breaks down. no trenching or digging needed. especially
in a small area where you're putting in miniature trees.
this way you avoid water logging issues too and the
tree roots will eventually find their way down into
the clay as needed (via worm holes ).


songbird