Composting and mulching can be beneficial to many things, including mature trees. It is extremely beneficial to new plantings.

Compost and mulch are not fertilizers, thus exempt from that rule.

No fertilizer unless you know for sure there's a deficiency causing an issue

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compost has nutrients.. but i wouldn't really call it a fertilizer ...

but the above cliche started ..... is too many peeps treat their PLANTS.. like CHILDREN.. and think they have to feed them.. which simply is NOT true.. unless something is lacking from the soil ...

trust me.. back in the day i killed lots of things with too much fert love ... soent a lot of money on it too ...

the natural ecosystem you refer to.. in a natural forest ... is not really akin to peeps over loving plants ... ma nature has had billions of years to perfect her system... i trust it ...

just plant the darn things.. and water them until established.. and then dont even bother to do that ...

though mulch is pretty ... but after establishing.. you dont even need that.. except to keep the nut on the lawnmower or the weedwhip away from the trees.. lol ... [i used to the that nut too.. lol]

keep thinking this stuff out.. learning is fun ...

ken

ps: some have said.. a tree is twice as big as what you see above ... in more of a pancake form .... so if you think about that.. you would be composting out the height of the tree.. and the neighbors might not like that.. lol ... so your little mulch ring.. wont be adding all that much to the overall scheme ...

I'll likely keep spreading compost and mulch material wide under my new fruit trees long term, but yeah, under big trees it's not realistic.

Ken is right, but, I like to pour some bunny poo tea (it is just what it sounds like) under my younger tree transplants. And because it is simply bunny poop soaked in water, it won't disturb any natural bacteria like some chemical fertilizers do. It is likely not needed, but, I do have a bit of the "feeding the kids" thoughts in my mind, but, once they are settled in, and have their roots in the soil for a few years, I do back off. I do mulch them also until they have 2-3 years to settle in. After that most I mulch so that I can mow around their 'mulch circle to avoid damaging the trees.

All I will say at this point is that, the more one reads into what is actually going on on and in the forest floor, the grosser it seems to dump concentrated nutrients around woody plants. IOWs, the mycorrhizal thing is just way more complex and dynamic than the way say....corn is grown in a far field, which BTW is more or less strip-mining the soil the way big ag operates these days.

And that yes, the deposition of organic matter around these woody plantings does indeed largely mimic the deposition of leaves, sticks etc. in the forest, and is undoubtedly beneficial in the long run.

I avoid fertilizers because I don't want to grow a 80 foot tree which needs them to survive in my yard. An 8 foot tree I can feed or whatever. An 80 foot tree would be an undertaking.

A tree which starts its life in the forest is probably going to live its whole life in the forest.

The very term "feed"...."plant food"... and others that point to trees (and all plants) requiring an outside input of "food" greatly misses the point as to what plants are and what they're actually doing. I know the terms have become commonplace but they are ridiculously ignorant.

The greatest fact of all on Planet Earth is the existence of a dizzying array of photosynthesizing organisms which each and every day "feed" themselves. We call these organisms plants. They don't "eat" food, they manufacture it.........and all other life then feeds off of that. And yes, sticklers, I'm purposely leaving the weird stuff growing around thermal vents at the bottom of the sea out of this discussion!

chemical ferts have lots of salts in them too. Manures do but, if you use sparingly briefly, it shouldn't hurt. I know mycorhizae help plants access phosphorus deep in the soil, not sure about potassium. The soil forum has all that info, sometimes the experts disagree on some things, of course. But, good for answering detailed questions. That stuff can get more complicated than you would think.

Oh it's danged complex. Helper bacteria setting the stage for mycorrhizal fungi, trees exuding substances from their root tips to "call" in the right fungi.....trees shunting photosynthates and other sap components to struggling trees on the forest floor......there's so much going on that in truth, we're only just beginning to see it. Meanwhile, the earth's forests are being done away with as if they're just nothing.

Poaky, my very limited understanding of the key roles of these fungi is indeed in being able to extract phosphates from sheer rock and water absorption and delivery. My gut tells me there's probably quite a bit more going on as well, with some relatively newer papers focusing on nitrate acquisition. And also true, the use of manmade fertilizers utterly ends all these processes on a given site. Once the tree somehow "senses" that it doesn't need the help of the fungi, it is able to quit supplying nutrients to those organisms, since it is getting the stuff it needs from an outside source, so to speak.

None of which should be interpreted to mean that the use of fertilizers is not warranted in soilless production schemes. Those peat/perlite mixes are almost completely lacking in nutrients of any kind, save for what gets added in production systems. But in the ground is a whole different realm.

Wisconsitom, complex soil biology from your post and what I'm learning about elsewhere makes me annoyed with pot grown trees full of fertilizer. Every one I've purchased has been full of it. Just delays the tree getting naturally established. I might start washing soil away completely from the roots, from now on with new transplants.

Container grown trees REQUIRE fertilizer - there is nothing in commercial nursery potting mix that will supply any necessary nutrients until the time it can be planted inground unless added by the grower. More often than not, container grown trees have been inadequately fertilized!! It is important to understand that container culture and the media used is not at all the same as inground growing conditions.

Bare rooting or root washing is becoming more and more an accepted way to go but I would caution against just doing so willy-nilly. Some species react rather poorly to such significant root disturbance and the timing of such activity is rather critical as well.

Oh I see, I'll pull back on that idea then. Good information.

Well, I like planting small specimens (if I can't start from seed) because when you buy even a gallon tree, you usually need to go wild on that rootball, and get rid of lots of those circling roots and the roots at the bottom of that planting container need to be cut back to where the roots are 50% gone, unless someone just repotted the plant, and there aren't many roots. When I get a small rootmaker container grown, or airpruned pots grown tree, I know those roots are not circling, and are all going into my soil, that's when I'll give em some bunny poo tea. Then let them be except for watering when there's no rain, And Mulch them well for at least 2 years. I've had to cut off a root or 2 on my 1 gallon (at planting time) oaks because I overlooked a root on top of the rootball that should've been removed at planting time. The tree wasn't stressed at all, but, it looked like a potential problem in the future. I know that potted trees need fert added etc. But, the forest has a pretty fascinating team of elements for lack of a better word. Those countries that are ruining their own land don't seem to have a choice, they just get by to feed their families, but, it is their grandkids that are going to suffer. I watch alot of Nat Geo shows and those like it. That's my source for why the forests are getting slash and burned for farming. I don't want to yammer on a nd on but you get what I'm saying.

I also wanna add that I add fall leaves around my trees and cover that with wood mulch. I am hoping I'm adding some good fungi or woodsy things for my trees. I may be fooling myself. But I think that maybe even 150 years ago my yard was a forest. I know it used to be planted with crops in a lot closer period of time to now, but, I hope there are mycorrhizae fungi,endomycorhizzae fungi still present. I know people years ago used cow poo, horse poo to fertilize, maybe the folks who farmed my yard didn't use chemicals and those fungisis' are still there. Well, we got the land in 1973, my parents did really. I know they had chemical fert in the 1930's, when that ship exploded on the east coast. Well, anyways, I think my soil may be okay as far as fungi. I wish their was a test. I think lots of folks would like that. I know you can buy the stuff. Okay, I'm yammering. Maybe someone else reading this wonders if they have these fungi already.

Ha, I just got an email just now from Oikos trying to sell me a Bio pak, it has cultures from the "biosphere", as they put it. I know Oikos has lots of good stuff, but, I wonder if these paks are worth it. I know Oikos have lots of good stuff, their plants and they are trying to help folks grow food plants that are hardy and native. I guess my trees are growing fine so no need, but, does anyone have any feedback that buying/using these bio paks have made a marked improvement in your trees/berries whatever?

Poak, just read your trio of posts here. A few comments: First, there are indeed ways to do a bioassay of what's in your soil. I'm at home now and don't have access to my stuff, but there's a company that analyzes composts, etc. to produce highly-detailed counts of what organisms are present. A bit outside the scope of home ownership, I think, but just saying, such is possible. Second, even land that has been abused can and does recover. Microorganisms are mobile. In the spore stage in particular, they are in the air you're breathing right now.....and in the air I'm breathing too!

Third, most all the studies I've seen of mycorrhizal associates in product form-stuff you can buy and then apply-has been disappointing. Numerous issues here-it's hard to keep this stuff alive "on the shelf"....we don't yet know what happens to these organisms even if they are alive at time of application; Do "native", pre-existing micros outcompete them? Soil chemistry not right? Too wet? Too dry? This is tricky stuff. What I can report is that bacterial-not fungal now-preparations do have a better track record of surviving the storage phase prior to being sold and used. Such organisms as Baccillus subtilis (specific strains) and others have indeed shown efficacy.

Your use of leaves, woodchips, etc. is probably-this is my opinion now-the two best all-around things a guy can do at this stage to foster a healthy soil microbiology. And finally, that "Bio Pak" may be a worthy product, but saying it comes from "the biosphere" is patently hilarious. Biosphere? That's only the entirety of life on earth!! Not too meaningful, huh?

edited to add: Regardless the somewhat dim view I offer of commercial products available, at least in the mycorrhizal realm-this is I think the future of plant production. We're just beginners, that's all. And by "we", I mean all of mankind.

Are the various compost teas of value then, any consensus on that? One could keep a regimen of spraying round trees long past when mulching is practical. It wouldn't be much to make barrels of the stuff every year. I made a few buckets of it this spring. Don't know if I wasted my time or not.

Lone, don't take my words as the last on the subject, please, but I somewhat question that whole thing. Simply put, if I'm both allowing natural accretion of organic matter and actively adding to it, in the form of composts, wood chip mulches, etc, what further value to be gained by this.? But again, as a long time-forever really-proponent of using organic matter as a soil amendment where you want maximal growth, most of the soils I tend to work with in the ornamental half of my job have been so well-amended over the years, we need do pretty much nothing at this point, except maybe the surface mulch, much of which eventually ends up decomposing in situ.

But I'm sure here too that somebody has a more comprehensive take on the subject. It's weird-I tend to work with either post-construction terrible stuff or these super-deep, well-draining amended soils, plus where relatively undisturbed, this area had a pretty deep loam anyway-like my backyard in this old part of town, there's something like 24 inches of rich dark top soil. So maybe I don't see it as a limiting factor, whereas in certain cropping systems, etc. it could make all the difference. Personally, I find the Bacillus subtilis et al preparations as the most interesting currently. I'd like to try them out at work. We push that annual stuff hard, and it seems like I'm always dancing on the edge of ending up with pathogen problems from too-soft growth, so maybe some "root shield" type stuff might be worth it. Haven't really ever had any serious problems, save one, that being white mold-Sclerotinium sclerotiorum-an entity you don't want to deal with-in 'Tidal Wave' petunias. But I digress-badly. As usual!

'I might start washing soil away completely from the roots, from now on with new transplants.'

Why not look for bare-rooted trees instead of ones grown in pots?

They are cheaper and better.

They are only available in Winter but are well worth the wait.

It's extremely difficult to find bare-root ornamentals, except maybe the absolute basics, or tiny forestry seedlings.

Unless you're a licensed nursery and buying wholesale, or you're buying fruit trees.

It probably is, and that's a great shame.

Potted trees and shrubs are a relatively new practice. And potted stuff has a lot of drawbacks.

I think the potting up has become the norm so plants can be sold year round. I have tree books from the 80's that show large containers filled with bare root trees to choose from, old books, huh? I am glad we can buy trees year round, sometimes i don't know what I want right away. Those grown in rootmaker containers make it so you can plant them and don't have to get rid of circling potted roots.

Tom, I think my trees are growing good, except my Willow oak. I do think that my woodland shade plants ( US woodland natives) may like some native woodland soil, I could dig up in a wild area with oaks and beeches, and plop some of the soil ina planting hole. I wont take much just a scoop or 2. I want to plant some Trillium, Mayapple etc. There are tons more. We have a few swaths of old growth trees and ferns that remain in the edges of where country roads have been carved out here., I took a few scoops of this dirt when i planted the 2 Q. Albas I dug out of the woods they have grown pretty good, dug up at about 3ft tall, they are about 13-15ft tall now i dug them up in 2006. I shoulda sown acorns they'd be bigger likely. I can only guess if that scoops of soil helped anything.

Yes, it's hard to know for sure. There actually are people today that do comprehensive assays of soil and compost microrganisms, but that's quite outside the scope of what the average tree fancier would be reaching for. And spendy, I should think!

I would think a 3-foot oak transplant to be just about the perfect size. Great going!

Thanks Tom.