Best Kind of Mulch for Fruit Trees?
sun_worshiper
13 years ago
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mango_kush
13 years agolast modified: 9 years agoRelated Discussions
mulching fruit trees
Comments (9)Harvestman: On the contrary, I love the Cooperative Extension Service, but they don't love me. Some, perhaps many local branches may be quite different from mine. I too, use wood as my only heat source, as 550 gallons of fuel oil lies buried and undisturbed behind my house. Maybe if I keep it long enough I can sell it for $5 a gallon. I also produce a lot of wood ashes, and have occasionally spread them thinly over the garden and around the trees, since my soil is slightly on the acidic side. But their very high alkalinity makes them dangerous to use in large amounts. For Wildlifeman: Although soils may vary somewhat within the state, most soils in Washington are fine for growing fruit trees without worrying too much about Ph. But if your soil is thin, rocky, or gravelly, mulching around them with any organic material you can find is better than nothing, from both the nutritional and moisture holding perspectives. As Harvestman observes, if you can shred your leaves they will work much better, but even sawdust spread thickly around the surface is fine. Unless buried, undecomposed organic amendments do not remove nitrogen from the soil, and will eventually add some after they break down. Mulch attracts large numbers of earthworms to the soil, and I occasionally take a pitchfork to dig around the trees for the ducks, which love earthworms. The worms breed so fast in good conditions that the ducks could never keep up. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA...See MoreFruit Tree Mulch?
Comments (35)Leaves are a wonderful tree mulch IMHO I always use them, with excellent results. Of course I do shred them very well first. Leaves contain trace minerals that tap roots pulled from deep in the earth bringing these minerals to the surface. More trace minerals are in leaves than in rock dust. Benefical fungi love leaf mulch, and you attract nutrient producing bacteria. Not to mention it is the earth worm's favorite food! It doesn't get better. Shred and lay in the fall and they keep the heat in the ground around the roots, by mid-spring they are almost completely gone. To help breakdown add coffee grounds throughout the winter. I hold them down with a thin layer of compost. Think about a forest, the leaves fall all around the trees and they do fine, to think they are harmful is incorrect, and people have pro by their name and suggest otherwise? Wow! Sounds like a way to sell other mulches and make volcanoes around trees! I guess all the different folks in these links are wrong? Not! http://www.organiclandcare.net/education/olc-articles/mulching-save-money-using-leaves-mulch http://landscaping.about.com/od/pruningtrees/f/mulching_trees.htm http://organicgardening.about.com/od/organicgardenmaintenance/a/autumnleaves.htm...See Morefruit tree mulch
Comments (2)There are many fruit orchardists that believe that grass sod is the best mulch there is for an orchard while there are others that will go to great lengths to kill any grass in the belief that the grass "robs" nutrients from the trees. I have not seen enough difference between the two schools of thought to think that it is worth the effort to get rid of the sod and mulch mowing that area will help keep the grass under control. In the fall, after all the fruit is harvested, you could spread compost (even compost containing animal manures) over the orchard and by the time the next harvest is to occur there will be no sign of that compost on the grass and any fruit that drops on the grass will be less likely to bruise while fruit that hits a wood chip will....See MoreMulching for citrus fruit trees
Comments (8)rhizo and softmentor, thank you both for your input about the mulching. I've just finished mulching my little citrus area with pine bark mulch, so it would be too late to remove all the mulch now. What I did was I left 1-2 ft around the trunk area bare and hope that will help to prevent root rot. Before the whole area was filled with weeds. There's a golden rain tree in the neighbor's yard that overhangs. It keeps sending seeds that sprout like crazy. I was too tired to fight with them and of course other assortment of agressive weeds which was the reason for my idea of mulching. Yes, rhizo, I'm weary of the fungus infection. I'll certainly take note to avoid overwatering from now on. The only problem here in Fl is sometimes we do get very wet rainy season that rains for days on end like at the present time. Softmentor, you must have an incredible variety of citrus trees. 100 trees is a lot of trees. Are you growing all of them for a hobby? I wish I have that much land to grow that many. At the moment, I have 14 different kinds of citrus (5 of them are lemon/lime) and I have 3-4 spots left to plant orange trees. What would you recommend for my planting zone? I prefer those I can make juice out of and of course are disease resistant. Thanks again for any help you can offer....See Moresun_worshiper
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