HOW TO PLANT A FRUIT TREE - the Ellen White method

g'day and welcome back to the weedy garden uh just a little warning or just a little word of advice that in this video there is a sequence where there is a decomposing mouse and it's at the time written on the screen in the video so if you don't like to see a mouse decomposing underneath the soil and see what nature looks like in real life then just be aware that um just to look away from the screen at that time okay so let's get on with the video [Music] my mango tree is doing really well up here on the hill and i was just about to start planting some more of my fruit trees out here in my food forest beside my swale when i went into my computer and started reading some of your comments today i'm going to show you how i plan a mango tree so a couple of months ago i posted this video about how i planted the mango tree yeah someone it was uh maria maya wrote a comment and said mr we next time try planting trees this way watch this first video and this one shows the entire process yeah so i looked at that link and it was about planning a tree the ellen white style ellen white method so i googled that and ellen white was yeah it's a woman in the 1800s who had an idea to plant a tree and i'll share that with you on this video i tried this method i was amazed since pretty good once upon a time there lived a woman named ellen white she was born in america and became a writer in 1891 after her husband died she sailed on a ship to australia and bought a property just south of here now the soil on her property was very very poor and she was worried that she couldn't grow wonderful colorful natural clean organic food just like she'd hoped for for her it was a matter of survival to figure out a way to do that and one night she had a dream or a night vision as they called them back then it was an inspirational dream that gave her a method of planting a fruit tree so that it would thrive for many years she planted her trees in this way and became very well known for growing the biggest juiciest and sweetest fruit in the area although ellen white was a writer she actually never wrote this method down but for many years her grandson herbert clarence white he spent time planting trees with his grandmother ellen and learnt it directly from her but he never wrote it down either then in 1950 a 13 year old boy by the name of lynn hwag was attending a tree planting class given by herbert clarence white himself the good thing is that lin he did write it down he's about 83 years old today and i saw a video of him planting a tree and i wrote it down too now i can share it with you this is what it looks like and it goes like this first you gotta start by digging a hole and needs to be about a meter deep and about a meter wide and you'll notice when you start digging that the soil looks different as you go down so the nice soil on top that's the top soil and the next layer is the subsoil and if you go deep enough you'll get down to the clay in most cases you need to use your top soil later so just leave that on the side of the hole so there's a little stump there or an old root there it's dead so i'll leave it there and that'll rot and become food for my tree but i just wanted to show you the that i want to make this this whole square see because i think when you make a round hole i think the roots they they just keep going around around the hole right but i think if you make a square hole the roots come out like that and then they hit the corner and then they go in they go outside the hole they go into the soil there so that's why i'm making it a square hole i think the tree is going to do better i think the trees roots are going to spread out underneath the ground a lot more see what we want to try and do we want to try and mimic the forest and this hill up here has been bare hill for probably many many many many years so there's no big old roots and stuff in the soil anymore there's no organic material underneath here so i'm going to fill it up with organic material as if i've chucked the forest in here see this is just all clay but i'll put that around the back here to hold the water and i'll take the topsoil out i'm just going to keep digging [Music] as you can see i take the clay out and i put that on that side of the hole downhill so i use that as like a catchment area for the water [Music] now you'll need some ingredients for your hole you'll need some of your topsoil and you'll need some leaf mold and you'll need some compost [Music] and so you've got to keep some of your topsoil when you dig your hole just keep that aside or put it in a bucket then uh two buckets of this uh forest leaf mulch this is the stuff that's got nice uh some the nice mycelium the nice fungi in it see in a natural system all the nutrients and minerals come from the animals and plants that have lived and died upon the soil but also the rocks and the stones that are found in the soil now if you think of a healthy forest floor as being like a big supermarket it has all the minerals and nutrients that the plant needs and the fungi it's like the shop assistant that helps assist the plant in finding and transporting all these nutrients up into its roots out into its leaves and into its fruit [Music] you've got to try and think a way a forest thinks all the animals that live in the trees the birds the spiders the mice and the bats and everything else they're all eating from the tree and they're all pooing and they're all dying the tree is even feeding itself by dropping the leaves and twigs and branches all of which becomes food for the microorganisms which release the nutrients back into the soil that can feed the plants again [Music] so i've got to get two buckets of that then i only get two buckets of compost [Music] so you've got your top soil and your leaf mold and your compost and you've got to mix in some calcium and some phosphate as well into this mix so calcium the tree needs calcium so you can go and buy some dolomite lime or you can buy some gypsum um or you can get eggshells or even a dead animal think about the bones [Music] and then you have to have your phosphate it's from bones it's from dead animals so i use blood and bone i think you'll also find lots of phosphate in crusher dust sea water is full of micronutrients and it's also full of minerals seawater it's even got gold in it and it's very similar to the human blood but plants love seawater not too much about one liter in a in a watering can once a year and kelp as well has a lot of trace minerals and it's very high in nutrients micronutrients but just a handful is enough in the illinois description there's also an air pocket at the bottom of the hole and you can use a pot or a bit of pipe [Music] but i'll explain that later [Music] so you got all your ingredients but you still need some manure [Music] and you'll also need some mulch you'll also need a big stone as an anchor to put underneath the tree so mix your top soil your leaf mold your compost your calcium your phosphate and your kelp and mix it all together and then divide it into two piles one half of the mixture goes in the bottom of the hole and the second part of the mixture goes on the top of the hole and in the middle of the hole we just have top soil [Music] this is going to be yummy so yummy we're basically just delivering a forest floor to this tree i can't wait to see it in a couple of years now we're going to put some stones on the bottom i'm going to use crusher dust so this is where you need your stones the stones help the electromagnetic current move through the soil move up and down the stem from the roots to the leaves and all plants need electricity so then you've got your crusher dust okay crusher dust you can call it cracker dust or volcanic rock paramagnetic rock basalt road fill rock dust metal dust metal rock rock metal i don't know try some of those it's also got phosphate okay so i'm down in the hole and the ellen white method they she suggested you put some sort of an air pocket down the bottom of the hole and um and i think that she thought that because in a real forest there's imagine the root of a big old tree that's dug down in the soil somewhere and the tree dies and all the microbes eat the eat the wood and um sort of basically leaves a hole in in the soil doesn't it so that's what we want to sort of recreate in this hard in this hard clay soil so what we want to do is we want to put an air pocket down the bottom and i don't want to use a plastic thing because i don't think they're you know i mean you could do something else because in nature it's the big old route that's down there right so i've got a few old dead roots here and i've got a bit of a bit of diddle bit of dead wood and um it's sort of very airy and sort of aerated and old and light so i'm going to just make a pile of that down the bottom and that'll be that'll be my air supply so my soil sort of remains aerobic down around the roots around the rhizosphere as they say as they call it so i put that in the middle i'm gonna put a hessian bag over the top of that because that'll that'll help keep the air pocket so after you put in your little air pocket then just cover the next third of the hole with topsoil [Music] and remember every layer you want to stamp it down you want to stamp it down so it doesn't sink okay so we're going to take the plant out [Music] now nice and gently i'll just see if i can just spread the roots out a little bit yeah you want to spread the roots out a little bit because they've just been going round and round and round and round in a little pot yeah you want to kind of help them find a new direction i might go and get i might go and get a big stone actually okay we're going to put a stone in the bottom it's like an anchor okay and then your last third of your hole you fill up with your mixture again the second half of your mixture i'll just scrape a bit of this off and level it out i'm just going to use cow manure because there's plenty of cow manure around here plenty of cow manure you can use chicken manure or pigeon manure or horse manure they get stronger the birds is stronger the bigger animals not so strong cow is good [Applause] okay now i'm just going to put some worms on top and these ones are compost worms and this is my compost bin but it's not very good one because i haven't learned how to do it properly yet i know for one they don't like onions and i've got tons of onions in this one so but there is a few but i'm going to learn how to do a worm farm properly and that'll be my next video actually but the worms in the compost they're the wigglers the wrigglers and they eat the compost and they live in the first like um six or eight inches of the soil then you've got the earthworms the earthworms they live deeper down in the soil like two or three four meters down and they go down into the soil and they come up and they eat the manure from the regulars and then they go down into the soil and they're really good for aerating the soil making all these tunnels down deep into the soil so you want some compost worms around the tree so you get the earthworms to come up okay so i'm going to put some mulch on top now and i just want to show you this area of the garden used to be called my angels corner this is the corner of the garden that i left grow didn't touch it so see how weedy the weedy garden gets if no one touches it so put that on top and when you water it then you want to put in your salt water you want to use about one liter of your salt water in a nine liter watering can and you can do that once a year so that's how i've planted about five or six of my fruit trees now for my food forest the next i need to plant will be my jackfruit my blood orange my lychee my mulberry elderflower and i've got a couple more mangoes and avocados to go too and i know now from what i'm learning on this weedy hill that if these trees get the nutrients they need to reach their full potential then when i eat them so will i have a nice day and i'll catch you later

Channel: The Weedy Garden

Views: 395,558

Keywords: permaculture, organic gardening, how to garden, how to make a food forest, growing your own food, sustainable living, off the grid, grow food, gardening, gardening tips, sustainability, vegetable garden, covid garden, lockdown garden, covid project, lockdown project, planting fruit trees, food forest, fruit tree, ellen white, ellen white treeplanting method, best way to plant a fruit tree, avocado tree, plant a tree, plant an avocado tree

Id: 4-p2vflRnj4

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Fri May 21 2021