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armoured

Soil treatment after removing trees?

armoured
4 years ago

In a corner of a heavily treed lot, had to remove a large dead birch, and roughly at the same time, a few decent sized maples. I'm not planning on having the stumps ground out or otherwise removed, just let them rot out (although I may try to speed that up if anyone has suggestions).

Anyway, the ground around it is pretty hard and heavy with clay, with not a lot of growth around it - the maples at minimum sucked up close to everything, and there was very little sunlight that got through the heavy canopy. There are some modest ground plants that I don't know the name of, and whatever maple shoots I haven't pulled up by hand. But mostly other trees and their roots. There are other birches, firs, maples, chestnut of some kind around. In this now-naked roughly three metre square area, we'd like to plant some other kind of young tree before too long.

Is there any general guideline of what might be useful to the soil around? I assume some general nitrogen-containing fertilizer may be useful, and possibly as much mulch as I can find. I do have mulched branches and leaves (everything except the trunk and larger branches which will be split for firewood). But not so much that it'll be six inches deep around, perhaps a couple inches thick in the area at best.

I will have some other rotted leaves from previous years to apply, if useful. Extra fertilizer not a problem if indicated (within reason though).

Also, anything I should do to soil around the trees outside of this affected area?

All of above said, I'm not really planning on doing major work in this area, suggestions towards the lazier end best.

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