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Fruit & Orchards

fruit trees over maple roots

2 years ago

Hi, all. I was looking to plant some small, no-spray fruit trees and bushes, specifically Russian pomegranate, Asian pear, bush cherry, rasp/blackberries, maybe a muscadine grapevine. The only spot for this is on the side of my home where there is lots of sun and not much else. Immediately on the neighboring property, there is an aging maple with a very high canopy. It does not seem very healthy and will drop branches during storms, and it seems to be a matter of time before my neighbor needs to have it taken down.

The maple roots are woody, shallow and numerous in the area where I would like to plant. My thought was to bring in topsoil and mound it up into a berm where I would like to plant the fruit trees. I know maple roots like to be shallow so to avoid smothering them, the bed would only be maybe 3-4 feet by 15'. I can see the roots in a 15' radius around the trunk of the tree, and I'm sure they go even farther than that, so it would be a fraction of the root area.

Would this work, assuming the maple will be taken down in the next few years? I plan on trying anyway but would like pointers. Should I use composty topsoil or unamended topsoil? I've read that they no longer recommend amending the planting soil for trees to encourage root spread... How deep should the topsoil be?

TIA

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Comments (3)

John D Zn6a PIT Pa
2 years ago
last modified: 2 years ago
In my opinion if your planting dwarf trees and you have clay that you need to amend the soil before you plant trees as these trees stay small because they're on runt rootstocks and the combination of runts in clay will spell disaster. Poor growth, trees blowing over because of a lack of roots. I knew a guy who had a dwarf Bartlett pear. For years it was about 5 feet tall and maybe 30" in diameter. It grew 3 pears every year and you could rock the tree.

If you live in a cold climate the tree will do even worse.
ladychroe
Original Author
2 years ago
My soil is mostly loamy, slightly on the clay side. It's pretty good soil. I was planning on putting a layer of compost on top and then mulch.

At my last house we had red clay, so bad that when you walked outside after a rain, it would stick to your shoes 2-3 inches thick on the bottom. If you pushed a spade into it, it was stand up in that position indefinitely. It was rock-hard when dry. No non-native tree would do well without extensive amendments. I'd dig up a tree after 5 years of doing nothing and find that the rootball was still in the pot shape it was when I planted it!

Here it is good soil. But maybe I will mix in a little compost just in case.
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floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK
2 years ago
last modified: 2 years ago
The maple roots are very likely to grow up into your imported soil.

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