How's your soil fertility and drainage?

[Ed Laivo]

So often the case is not when to fertilize but rather if you need to fertilize at all. Soil fertility will be the judge of that and a soil test to determine what your soil is lacking is a good idea. In any case mulching the tree in my opinion has a far greater effect over the long term than any fertilizer. I would say if the tree is doing well then mulching and renewing your mulch each season is the best course. This would of course be different when growing in containers.

[telos]

Color me amused, this is my first day on the forums having just discovered them and Henry could be my neighbor. Just like Henry, I live in the new construction north of Dallas where all the yards are nothing more than sod over clay. Drainage is a huge issue for us.

The tricks for compensating are pretty simple:

--Dig an extra deep hole so the extra water flows down below the level of the roots. Either just put more soil in at the bottom, line with some gravel, or put some extra mulch on bottom anything that will take care to keep the water from drowning the plantings.

--Scrape the sides of the hole with your hand cultivator to prevent the 'clay pot effect' which is where the roots think they are in a pot because the smooth sides of the hole won't let it get some purchase out into the clay. This causes circling of the roots and leads to trees blowing over easily.

--Use at least half native soil in with your tree and shrub mix to back fill the hole. It will make the roots more likely to want to grow into the native soil and will grow a stronger and healthier tree.

--Mulch, mulch, and more good quality mulch. North Texas has a fairly low amount of rainfall compared to other states, but not as little as true arid regions. You want to keep the moisture locked in without drowning the plants in the few heavy rains we get. Native cedar mulch is relatively inexpensive and keeps the bugs away.

--Raised bed and above grade plantings also go a long way to compensate for the clay. It is a lot harder to drown something that is planted above the level of the water.

There are some other tricks like putting drainage pipes in at the bottom of the planting and litterally letting the water flow out from the bottom of the hole, down the pipe and out into the storm drain. I'll leave that one to the professional gardeners. I am just a little woman and I can't possibly dig a big enough trench to get it right without going the route of power tools and heavy duty equipment.

For the record, I have 22 fruit trees. Six trees are in pots for moving in or outside the house with the seasons. Six of my trees have above grade plantings, three of those are raised beds. I have lost and replaced three trees this year. Two trees drowned before I understood the drainage problem particularly well and one died of bug damage.

[cebury]

I live in Fresno, CA and have heavy orange clay soil in my yard. I also dug and amended the soil and did not go raised bed. I would use a raised bed if done today, but that's because of personal preferences (time, health, and family commitments). However, your warning is well-taken about creating a "tub" like effect when amending only under the newly planted tree -- you should at least create a 12" deeper trench around the target planting (like an underground mote) before back-filling and planting.

Our project was much longer than expected since we truly "excavated" in order to break through the hard-pan. It was a family project for the summer of 2007 and well worth the experience as well as the improved soil of our mini-orchard.

We had to dig past 36" to get well drained soil. I went down to 48" BETWEEN the tree plant locations for added protection.

We removed so much hard-pan from the area we had to transfer soil from another part of the yard and purchased a total of 2 cu. ft of soil to back fill.

Again, some would consider this overkill when you can do an 18" raised bed. But we planned on living here long term and wanted the best possible soil conditions for our fruit trees.

Here is a pic, of one section, at about halfway point:

For more info and other pictures go to my DWN Album titled "Creating a Mini Orchard".