First of all a little background. I am a graduate of Cal poly Pomona, I am a licensed irrigator in California and Texas. I also own a tree farm in Texas . White Hall Trees. In texas we do not have gray clay we have black clay that is at least as bad as what we had as a kid in California( I grew up in Orange County) Now with that said. The problem that everyone seems to have is the same. You claim you cant get fruit trees to grow in clay. Being a Civil Engineer, Landscape contractor and LI for 30 years I have some basic recommendations. First Clay is an excellent way to hold water ! and fruit trees need water! But not so much as to be wet all the time. First raise the tree about 3" above existing grade. When planting dig the hole twice as big around as the pot and 3 inches shallower than the pot . When back filling around the pot use a 3/4 to 1/4 ratio of good composted material to the clay and Float the tree back in. Simply put add water to the soil to get out air. Then ad 3" of good hardwood mulch around the tree. The biggest problem that you have is water so call Ewing Irrigation or John Deere landscapes and get some Rainbird .26 Drip tubing on 12" centers and drip the trees! If you circle the tree with lets say 6 drip emitters and water for 10 minutes you water .26 gal of water. Lets say the tree needs 3 Gal of water per week in one hour you will water 1.56 gal of water. So water 2 hours per week ! You may need to water Tuesday and Friday for 1 hour each day and check the tree hole with a moisture probe you can buy at one of the local Home depots for about $ 10.00 The biggest deal is don't guess ! Test and check ! Make sure. If you need more than 3 gal of water per week they have drip tube in .26, .4,.6, and .9 Netafim, Rainbird, Hunter, and Landscape products all make drip tube ! Do the calculations and if you are unsure call an irrigation professional they can help. The guys at Ewing can also help if you ask and by the way if you bring donuts to them they even get nicer !!!!!!!!!!!! Try It !

Thank you for the replies. We always have a cool winter, definitely not wet as we are well below the average rainfall this year to date. I have looked at the pictures of fireblight on the internet, they appear different as they all include signs of damage to the branch itself and all show pictures of mature leaves afflicted by fireblight. My tree is newly planted and many of the new budding leaves are afflicted. I was hoping someone could render an opinion or diagnosis

persimmonbob is correct. The feeder roots of trees are in the top few inches of soil, which has much better aeration than soil 1.5 feet down. Another potential problem (that takes longer to manifest) is that the bottom 1.5 feet of trunk are now below ground. Some trees respond to this by growing roots out of the trunk, other trees can't make that transition, and their trunk will eventually rot. I don't know how your tree will respond. The best thing for the tree would be to remove the extra soil. There is a good chance that the tree has begun sending new feeder roots upward, so if you do remove the soil, keep an eye out for roots to avoid damaging them. If you don't want to remove the soil, I would seriously consider just planting a new tree this fall or spring. The old one may never fully recover, and even if it lives, it may get a rotten trunk underground in a few years. Alex

I had a similar problem about 8-10 years ago, a large deer herd eating everything. Worst damage was in the late summer-early fall, when the bucks would use my young fruit trees to polish their antlers and rub off the itchy "velvet." They killed a few, and maimed some others that did survive. I had to do as you suggest, putting fences made of six foor wire mesh around each tree -- about 50 trees total. Since then, our deer herd in the neighborhood has declined a lot. The neighbor two doors down had the misfortune of hitting 3 deer with her car with a one year period -- her insurance agent couldn't believe it. I almost hit them a couple of times. Enough of them got killed on the roads that the population has dropped significantly. I have a fawn living in my yard right now -- quite small when I saw it about 5 weeks ago for the first time. I likes to spend the days in my corn and under my blackberry bushes, and, of course, it is stripping things at night, like collards, kale, soybeans, etc. I'm cutting things down as soon as they are havested, like the sweet corn, to remove cover and hopefully make "Bambi" move on to greener pastures.