In article ,
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:

Davej wrote:
Various dwarf fruit trees; cherry, plum, apricot. Soil here is gray
clay. Summers in the Midwest US are very dry but I try to water
regularly. Deer are often a problem for the trees but when I notice
damage I try to wrap them in plastic fencing. Of the last four trees
planted only one is still surviving.

You have deer problems. Prevent them in the first place, don't wait for
damage and then try to prevent further damage. Deer WILL find your
little trees and they WILL attack them unless you prevent that. Parts of
Britain are very illustrative of how effective deer are at preventing
trees from growing, unless the trees are protected from deer when they
are planted.

Planting fruit trees in clay has the risk of drowning them. You dig a hole
in the clay and fill it with permeable soil/mulch. The problem is that the
clay is not permeable and so forms a pond of water which can kill the roots.
The solution is to not to dig down but to build up.

Actually, the solution for planting trees in clay is to plant them _in_
clay, not in potting soil in a hole in (nor a pile on top of) the clay.
A tree has to be able to deal with the soil it's going to live in if
it's going to grow - putting it in potting soil tends to make it act
like a potted plant (the roots hit the clay and go in circles, rather
than pushing through it the way a tree grown from seed in the terrible
soil would.) Choose the smallest/youngest bare-root trees you can
get/find/order, sift the soil dug out of the hole to break up clods and
plant the tree in the hole with the soil that came out of the hole. If
the situation permits, working a whole row with a tractor-drawn
subsoiler may be a good initial preparation technique. A bit difficult
in the average backyard, though - but renting a small excavator and
digging a trench for several trees, rather than a hole per tree, may
work out. Away from the immediate planting zone you can simply put the
clods back in the trench and let time sort them out, rather than sifting
them as you should where you are actually planting. Be sure to call
dig-safe and know where anything they would not know to mark
(sprinklers, your yard-light wire, your septic pipes...) is on your
property before trying that. If you can add a drainage pipe in the
bottom that leads somwhere that the water can drain to, so much the
better.

Certain rootstocks are also better suited to clay soils. For full-sized
cherries, "Mazzard" tolerates clay better than "Mahaleb" - in dwarfing
rootstocks there will be various rootstocks of other names, and some
will be better, some worse, in clay or "heavy" soils. If your vendor
doesn't tell you what the rootstock is, choose a different vendor. You
might also need to vary to fruits (such as pears or apples) more
generally tolerant of clay; but the right rootstock can make a big
difference (or, the wrong ones just up and die in clay...)

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