Fertilizing Fruit Trees

[Music] hi guys it's spring and today I'm going to talk a little bit about fertilizing your fruit trees and first of all let's talk about why do we need to fertilize fruit trees well the first reason might be that the results of your soil tests say that you need to do something and some of the old-timers told me when I first started working for MSU Extension that we need at least 50 pounds per acre of phosphorus and for the poem fruits which would be apples and pears for potassium we'd like to have between 140 and 160 pounds per acre and if there were stone fruits like peaches or apricots or cherries we like to have between 200 and 240 pounds per acre now things are reported in parts per million now on the soil test so I made those conversions for you on the screen now with nitrogen that's a little bit different it depends on how large the tree is and nitrogen is probably one of the more important nutrients that you have to be concerned about but lots of things happen to nitrogen in the soil so we normally will have to apply nitrogen on a regular basis now there are a number of reasons why you would fertilize your fruit tree other than an indication for the soil test report for instance if your tree leaves were light green that could indicate a problem with nitrogen especially when they're first coming out in the spring also if there has been a very difficult winter and the trees have suffered from some winter injury that may be a reason why you would want to fertilize or if the tree has gone through a really rough year as a result of heavy disease or insect infestation so that would be another reason why you may want to put on some supplemental nitrogen now another thing that we look at when we are fertilizing our fruit trees is how much annual growth are they putting on now a dwarf apple tree for instance especially if it's per type dwarf apple tree we only put on about 12 inches or so of annual growth whereas say a Cortland apple may put on three feet of growth so you have to know a little bit about what type of you're working with whether it's a dwarf tree or standard tree as to how much expected annual growth you would have now the way that you could look at how much annual growth the tree is putting on is start at the bud that's gonna break that year and move down on that branch until you see what's called a bud scar which is the number of lines where the bud from the previous year has broken that indicates one year of growth and as you go further back on the branch you will be able to see additional amounts and so you may see that a tree has put on twelve inches of growth one year eighteen inches of growth to another year 24 inches of growth in another year depending on how much rainfall and the fertility of that particular tree has so if a tree is putting on a good annual growth it has good color and it hasn't had any real problems then you don't have to fertilize on an annual basis now the second thing I'd like to talk about is when do you fertilize the trees well what we try to do with fertilizing on trees has put it down on the ground as soon as possible in the early spring that you can get out and do it this is usually about April when the snow is gone and we try to get our fertilization done before the month of June the next thing you're going to have to decide on is what type of method are you going to use to apply the fertilizer for instance you can buy these stakes where they come with a little plastic cover you put them on top of the fertilizer and you pound them in around the drip line and the drip line is out if you if you look directly down below the farthest branches out that's your drip line and you would put these evenly spaced around the tree and the number you would use is based on the size of the tree now the package itself isn't that expensive but if you look at it on the long run and how much you're paying for the weight of that fertilizer that's a fairly expensive route to go now another option you have especially for smaller trees is using a root feeder and this is an example of a root feeder right here and this is a Ross root feeder and it has a top here where and and I don't have the fertilizer pellets with me it has a hole here where you put your fertilizer pellet you screw this top on you hook your hose up to this end this is the handle for carrying and then when the water comes through here it dissolves the fertilizer inside here and then it goes down the pole into the ground and usually you won't put this pull down more than a few inches and it comes out of this little tip here and you get a liquid fertilizer now you're not getting a lot of fertilizer for the tree but it's okay for a starter tree and it waters the tree at the same time of course you are paying a higher price for this but if you like garden gadgets this is a nice way to go if you have a fruit tree on a fairly heavy clay soil and your soil is hard to penetrate you just put this in as far as it'll go and the water will soften up the soil and you can move it down deeper if you'd like but you want to keep the water and fertilizer up around where most of the roots are so that's in about the top 6 to 12 inches of the soil another option that you have is to apply a liquid fertilizer such as Miracle Grow or rapid grow or fish emulsion or something like that if you want to use an organic source and these type of fertilizers are good for younger trees they're dilute and you can even apply them when you plant the tree normally we don't suggest that you put fertilizer especially in the planting hole when you plant it but you can do this with Miracle Grow or rapid grow or fish emulsion because they're so low concentrated in nutrients and they can get the tree off to a good start but that's your call another way to fertilize that's more efficient and economical is the a balanced fertilizer from a bag like a ten ten ten or twelve twelve twelve and the amount that we would use is based on the size of the tree truck in terms of diameter for instance we usually suggest about one cup of a balanced fertilizer per inch diameter of tree so if you have a five inch diameter tree it's five cups and then you would just spread that on the surface in a wide band around the drip line and it's best to apply a granular fertilizer just before you have rain because when it rains the nutrients are released off of the carrier and the roots can readily pick it up once it's washed down into the soil profile the maximum amount that we're going to use is eight cups so regardless to whether your tree is eight inches or fifteen inches you still use eight cups this is what we call a maintenance amount and we don't just do this willy-nilly and say well my tree is six inches diameter every year I'm going to apply this six cups of this fertilizer you should evaluate what it's doing for you is it improving the color of the tree is it improving the annual growth the amount of annual growth is it producing well so we're looking at what are the results and another thing you can do and I'll do a video on this later but most homeowners don't bother with is something called leaf analysis and leaf analysis is where you collect leaves usually excellent quality leaves around 100 or so and that's done around late summer I think about August I'll have to double-check that and you send this up to the soil testing lab at your local land-grant University and what they do is look at the nutrient levels in the leaves so what you're trying to do is compare what you're putting on the ground with what's getting up in the tree into the tree and if you're getting a good amount up into the leaf and the tree is doing really well you may be able to cut back on the amount of fertilizer you need or you may just not use it at all for a particular year now some of you do not like to use chemical fertilizers and I I have a problem with that because when I teach people about gardening it's their option I try to give multiple options so your options for organic fertilizers would be compost which compost is more of a soil amendment than a fertilizer because the analysis is so low but it certainly will improve the soil around the tree and will help it to live and and flourish now animal manures for instance cow manure horse manure those types of things especially if they be composted are good materials to use as a side dressing and basically you put it on like you'd put on a mulch and you would do this early in the season also there are some organic fertilizers that you can buy that are balanced fertilizers like a five five five but whatever we were suggesting using say a 10 10 10 you would double the amount of the organic fertilizer so take into consideration that analysis and compare it to the recommendations we used for the chemical fertilizers now the nutrients will not be available as quickly but you will still get a good release of nutrients over a longer period of time and your plants will benefit from that so you have those options available to you and remember you should evaluate the soil test and look how your trees are growing before you decide whether or not a need for a more aggressive fertilizer program is necessary if you have any questions or if I didn't explain something that you want to know about you're free to give me an email or make a comment and I don't get to them right away but I will answer your question because I am trying to answer comments and questions from I think 60 or 70 emails or I should say videos right now on my youtube channel so I hope you found that helpful and I'll talk to you later option one is to go down and buy fertilizer tree spits and normally we don't suggest you put further eyes and even though we don't suggest that you put fertilizer fertilizer fertilizer or it could be an organic for local fertilizer and think I'm having a stroke you like if you have run a soil test you could use a balance for alert [Music]

Channel: Get Growing with Gary Heilig

Views: 11,190

Rating: 4.9069767 out of 5

Keywords: How to Fertilize Fruit Trees, Fruit tree fertilizer, Fertilizing a fruit tree with a Ross root feeder, Ferrtilizing fruit trees, fruit trees, home orchards, Master Gardener Program, Gardening in Michigan, Gary L.Heilig, MSU, Michigan State University, Michigan State University Extension, Cooperative Extension Service, Home gardening, Backyard Orchards, When and how to fertilize fruit trees, Fruit tree fertilizer spikes, when to fertilize fruit trees in Michigan

Id: FTGKCJ7EvqM

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Tue May 28 2019