I have no advice to offer, only encouragement. What a great project! Well, I do have one piece of advice - take care with your back and hands. I am making a flagstone walk, and have learned how carpal tunnel can effect moving that flagstone around, although I am well past the age of toddlers. : ) Keep us posted with photos as you progress. I hope you get great advice from those 'in the know'. Jane

If there are woods nearby with decent leaf reside on ground and you're careful about poison ivy there should be lots of leaf mould under the surface leaves if you move them. I needed so much to amend my father's cement clay soil that I got tired of spending money and time buying compost, humus, greensand, etc. that I went out to woods behind his house and dug out wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of great decomposing black leaves with all the worms I could get my hands on. Only thing better than economical is free plus it's using what's already in the natural environment in the way plants grow naturally with advantages of decomposition. Never in a million years did I think I'd be on my knees gathering up decomposing black leaves, relocating "good" worms, squishing cutworms and slugs that come along with decomposition and generally looking like a mud covered Mrs. Greenjeans by the end of the day...LOL. Found out I'd do pretty much anything to make the soil as "right" as I could so the plants could follow suit. Broke up leaves by hand into very small pieces to avoid compaction and then mixed well into clay soil, which does have great nutrients but doesn't drain for eons, with some bagged compost/humus and sphagnum peat moss (which seems antithetical but some people say it loosens clay soil). If I had some garden gypsum or NJ greensand left I threw some of that in too. I took a scattergun approach figuring whatever I could work into that clay to aid in drainage would help. I've got quite a few inches of hardwood mulch in all new gardens from 3 yards delivered that cost more than I thought it would but everyone was yelling at me to get mulch on the clay so it wouldn't harden anymore than it already had. Broken up leaves and/or some pine needles might do you for part of mulch given the leaves are free for gathering from woods and pines are dropping their needles right now around here adding to years of the stuff under pines. You're doing a great thing and I wish you lots of luck. One of the very, very best times of my life was the summer when I was 19 and worked at a summer camp with kids from the city. It was glorious. Catching and throwing back little Sunnies in the lake, hikes through woods...just a great experience and one I hold dear in my heart all these years later.

Well, for one thing, lime takes some time to work its magic. Your yellow onion variety may have been more forgiving than the red as far as acidity and the other factors that ph plays in nutrient uptake. Generally i've found that my red onions are more prone to not sizing up when nutrients are lacking, especially Nitrogen. I would take another ph test close to the time of planting to see how the lime is working, lay on the compost very heavily and watch the plants growth closely. If they seem checked you could side dress with the OG fertilizer or water with fish emulsion if needed. Maybe others will chime in with some good ideas. Cheers.

UPDATE 2019! Hey everyone, happy new year! You guys are still my special community of help and advice that I always think of when I am around my tree! I have since brought my tree down to my parents house in South Carolina. Being a bachelor (still) I had to move into several different apartments in Nashville since that post, none of which would be suitable for my baby to thrive in! My parents also have adopted her and done an excellent job helping raise her as my dad loves loves loves lemons in all of the water that he drinks. It had a great summer - they brought it outside and kept it in full sun - it grew to become a large leaf bearing tree that the kids love to “pretend water” with toy cups and boats full of water. Now it has been brought in for the winter and it has grown so many lemons - I’ve been anxiously waiting for them to start turning yellow. Over thanksgiving it appeared that some of them were beginning to turn yellow at the base of the fruit. I was hopeful that this January they would turn full yellow and I could come and pick a few. Here is the sad news. It has been dropping leaves consistently. It still is blooming. My dad and i think that it is due to over watering. Then i just found out from my dad that after Christmas it got a spider mite infestation. My dad sprayed it with some pesticide and he thinks the spiders are all dead. I’m attaching a photo of what he used. Again, just wanted to update you guys. Last year we got lemons and it was incredible to see where this tree had come from. I think I might have to name her Lazarus! Never would have saved her with yalls help. What do y’all think of the current state the tree is in? What do you think of the spider mite infestation? Any advice would ALWAYS be so helpful!! Forever grateful, Jamie