all that deep raw mineral soil will develop into good soil in a very short time, well short by tree time. A year with mulch and it will look like top soil and in 2 years, you will have the o, a, b, c soil horizons I outlined above. wet mud and all that aside, it's does not help to back fill with top soil and it does not help to top dress with top soil. since you have a sharp slope, probably the best thing you can do is grow a "green manure" crop like an annual grass mixed with clover or alfalfa for one year on the whole slope. use a light scattering of spoiled hay or commercial top dressing over the seeded area to help it hold and give it something to start with. That will help hold the slope and build the soil. You can rake what you cut or mow, around the tree for more mulch. You original question is how much top soil. Well, the preponderance of testimony here is ... that's a bad idea, which is why no one answered it directly. You will almost always wind up with more problems that you solve doing that. Rebuilding a good soil from the parent soil is the best way to go in almost every case. Also, the manor of planting on a slope that you mention, with the front that open, is not a stable planting for a tree on s slope. You should dig back into the slope making a flat terrace with a flat "cove" back into the hill. plant the tree so that the center of the tree at soil line is back in the cove and so that in a couple of years when the slope erodes back to the tree, the base of the tree will still be at soil line. Use the soil you cut for the "cove" on the down hill side but do not plant in that loose fill. Just let it add stability to the low side, but plant in soil that is a stable part of the hill still. Well, good luck with all this. hope we helped.

Lapins, Stella, Black Gold... Be prepared for possible early spring frost/freeze problems (they like to bloom early) and fruit that splits (too much rain around ripening time). Animals also love them, as do insects. I've got several on Gisela 5(i think) and they are roughly 7ft tall with no pruning after 3 years. You don't really say if you want sweet or sour. Some of the sour are on the sweet side of things... although i don't think they can compare to the sweets quite yet.

Hi every one, hi Man-Go-Bananas, In January I grew lemons, apples and kumquats as I said I would. They are all doing rather well. I have a couple of questions. 1-Lemons I planted some lemon seeds a month ago in Jiffy Easy pellets. I hope you all know what they are - small soil packs. I have kept them indoors in a light windowsill. Now they have grown very nicely, they are around 5-7 cm tall and have nice healthy looking leaves. The thing is their roots have started to come out of the bottom of the soil pellet. I want to make bonsai out of these trees. should I cut off the roots as they come out? Should I just let it be? Or should I transplant them quickly into a pot. The roots which have come out seem to be drying out. 2-Kumquats The Kumquats were planted in January too. Some I started in Jiffy easy pellets and some in wet paper towel. All of them are now transplanted in Jiffy easy pots, which are pots made of some sort of cardboard it seems, with potting soil. The baby trees look as if they can't stand their own weight even tho they are so small still. Should I put a stick or something to support them? And how? I want to keep these trees as small as possible too. What do you suggest? 3- Apples I started some of the apple seeds in January and some a little later after being kept in the fridge for a while. They are all growing nicely except for three of them which I kept outside in the cold and snow and they are sprouting but on the soil, I see a kind of white colored fungus (mold) growing. should I throw them away. The rest of them are OK. some have even grown another set of leaves. In order to dwarf them should I be pinching out the new set of leaves? Thank you all in advance for your help. Cheers

Thanks again for all the helpful advice, guys. I just raked back a bit of the soil around the trunk and put down some straw, hoping that will prevent water from pooling in the middle. When I raked the soil I did run into a few VERY thin roots that I'm not sure were even connected to the tree. I hope my roughing them up didn't cause any damage. Overall, the tree looks a lot better and happier now. My next step is fencing it in to keep the critters out. It probably is opossums. I've seen them climbing over our fence at night in the past. I'd rather just make a cage/fence for the tree than try to catch them. I've also had a real problem with ants climbing up the tree and farming aphids that feed on the new leaves. I had to remove the Tanglefoot when I was working on the tree and will reapply it. It keeps the ants away but getting it on is a real pain. I have to crawl under this tiny tree and the usual method of wrapping the paper strip around the trunk doesn't work because the bark is not smooth and creates gaps under the paper that the ants just crawl through. So what I've been doing is putting a piece of duct tape around the trunk and putting the Tanglefoot on that. I don't really like taping the tree, though. I considered putting the goo directly on the trunk but I've heard that's not good either. Any other possible advice on that? Blocking up the gaps under the paper with cotton and what not is difficult as I have do do all of this while practically lying on the ground and straining my body. Ugh.