Planting a Fruit Tree on TOP of an Old STUMP!

g'day I'm Mark from self-sufficient me and long time no see and just because I haven't been uploading videos lately doesn't mean that I haven't been extra busy getting into it in the garden in fact that's why I haven't been creating videos because I've been digging instead so much digging that I felt like changing my name from Mark to Doug but that's my father-in-law's name so I don't think he'd Dig It Anyway I planted about 30 fruit trees over the past few weeks so in this video I wanted to show you how and why I planted some of these trees in raised garden beds and one of them over the top of an old stump from another fruit tree let's okay getting to it gee I miss doing that it's good to be back [Music] most standard fruit trees like citrus stone fruit mangoes apples mulberries are quite Hardy and will grow in a range of soils without too many problems unless the ground is Extreme like a swamp very Sandy salty or rocky conditions here on our property we only have about a foot or less of topsoil and it's decent quality but underneath that topsoil is a clay which I found out the hard way that some fruit trees like avocados custard apples tamarellos Panama berries can only grow in free draining soil and can't tolerate clay or heavy soil types with their Roots sitting in water for even just a few days so what to do with those types of fruit trees well what you can do is you can Mound up some good premium free draining soil if the area is right and plants onto those Mounds keeping the tap Roots away from the clay this is what I've done with these avocados here but as you can see the ground and slope backs on to our raised shed slab making it easier to be able to Mound that up without it sinking or getting washed away I also had a bit of a barrier I've taken that away now to prevent the Hill from washing down in storms initially I don't need it now because I've left the grass and some weeds grow and it's now compacted down enough and with the tree roots as well that should keep that mound nice and stable from now on it's not as easy just to heal up anywhere because the soil has a tendency to sink and spread out you need a barrier to hold the soil in and that's why I decided to give growing trees in raised garden beds ago I've done this successfully with blueberries because they need a specific type of soil mix they need a more acidic type of soil so instead of trying to amend the soil directly I've just got the right saw for it and planted it in this raised bed and it's going really well and I'm going to do the same with this coconut it's a dwarf coconut tree behind me here and coconuts well they're coconuts they grow in tropical areas thousands of kilometers away from here so to give this tree any chance of survival I need to replicate the conditions as best as possible by planting it in a sandy soil mix after losing our Panama berry tree one of Nina's favorite all-time berries to eat we replaced here with a lychee which will handle the conditions better and then planted another one in a raised garden bed behind me here what I noticed with the Panama Berry over the years before it slowly perished was how well it did in dry conditions when other trees would suffer in the heat however in periods of prolonged rain the Panama Berry leaves tended to droop down and it looked sick when on the other hand the citrus trees behind me here they were all flourishing and loving it I realized the clay was slowly suffocating the root system of the Panama Berry and I had made a mistake planting it directly into the soil in this spot here we had a large Helena olive tree but when we had a whole lot of wet weather about eight months ago lots of rain the Olive Tree died along with the Panama Berry and several other of our fruit trees so I cut it back and left a stump that I was going to pull out but instead of going through all that trouble and you know how much trouble it is to sometimes remove a stump you have to get a stump Grider in or I've done that video on removing a stump with a wedge it worked but it was hard work so I thought what else could I do could I leave it there and yes you can so I decided to plant this Panama bearing over the top of the stump all together and that saves me time and most importantly a heck of a lot of effort like Google culture in a raised vegetable garden bed the stump will eventually rot and add nutrition to the planting hole for the new tree to use but I wanted to Quicken the process up so I drilled a heap of holes and that should allow moisture to penetrate the stump and help degrade it the Panama's Roots shouldn't be impacted at all it is nature and Roots will tend to grow around and through the rotting stump I used a small raised garden bed with an open base made from recycled soft Plastics by plastic forests pretty cheap to buy easy to screw together very tough and long lasting and recyclable again at the end of life the soil I used came from scrapings of our own topsoil around the front of our shed to shape the land and make the drainage better it's not a premium mix of soil obviously but it is a light soil and should be appropriate for this type of job I packed it down as I went to lessen the sinkage over time because I don't want the tree to drop in the garden bed and then have to dig it out to lift it up again I also added some fertile utilizer Blood and Bone to pump up the nutrients and get the tree off to a good start I overfilled the raised bed again to allow for sinkage as the soil will still drop and compact down to some degree I topped the bed with a loosened mulch to help protect the newly planted tree give it some extra nitrogen when that breaks down and to conserve moisture and prevent weeds and I finished it off by watering in with a seaweed tonic to help with transplant shock these beds are 40 centimeters high by around 60 centimeters wide and I think that's going to be big enough although there is an argument to make the raised bed a little bit bigger the bigger the root ball the better it will be for the tree say around 90 centimeters or even more but the bigger you go of course the more soil you have to use and the more space that will take up but I'm going to stick with these small arrays garden beds for now and just see how we go unfortunately a bush turkey the little bugger got into the bed and raked off a lot of the mulch I can't even find it it's just everywhere all over the ground now but regardless you can see the tree is growing really well and where is it it's even fruiting and we've got our first ripe Berry oh Devin smells like fairy floss it's got a really good smell this will be going to Nina although it's tempting to pop it in now Panama Berry trees can grow up to 10 meters but I will keep it much smaller than that by pruning it to a manageable height which should also keep the root ball smaller ultimately time will tell to see if this is a real success but I'm confident this will work and solve the wet feet problem down the back of our main Orchard here we did have a cluster of banana trees growing but they weren't very good quality and I persisted with them for years and eventually came the day when I decided to just get rid of them and put in something better something more productive we have better varieties of bananas growing at the back of our veggie garden and we're also making the transition from big plants to the dwarf varieties because I'm sick of climbing up ladders to bag the bunches cut down banana plants make an excellent mulch or compost in this case I use the banana waste around this big mango tree as a mulch fertilizer as you can see the banana plants are reshooting and some of them are even coming up through these raised garden beds pretty incredible I've planted some new custard apples in this spot and hopefully they'll do well down here raised above the original soil what I'm going to have to do is keep cutting or breaking the shoots down until they eventually run out of energy and die and then hopefully these custard apples that I've planted in these raised beds will grow well without any competition and also without wet feet and yes the bush turkeys have got in and raked off the mulch as well and unfortunately they raked around the root ball of this custard apple and it's not doing too well and I'm afraid it looks like I'm going to lose it because of the root damage and lastly I thought I'd show you this tamarello tree which I planted in a veggie garden for the same drainage reasons but instead of a raised garden bed I planted this one in an old pot tamarellos are a finicky tree to grow they hate wet feet but then they like lots of water they Wilt if it's too wet and then they Wilt easily if it's too dry so you can't win but I think growing them in a container will allow me to regulate the moisture levels easier and keep this tree happy this tamarello is an orange variety you can get a red variety as well and I think this medium-sized container will work well if I keep the tree around head high or just a few meters well I hope you enjoyed this video if you did make sure you give it a big welcome back Mark Thumbs Up And subscribe if you haven't already thanks a lot for watching bye for now are you still there well that's incredible you're the guys that hang around right to the end of my videos and I love that thanks a lot for doing that uh look I just wanted to say a few extra things you might be wondering why I've been away I've I've sort of posted a few social media things explaining it a little bit but it's really nothing Sinister or anything like that yes I kind of felt like a bit of a break that is true and it's good to have a break from everything every now and again just to rejuvenate the batteries because I've been doing this for over 10 years now and although I absolutely love it one I don't want to do is post stuff not being genuine enough you know not not wanting to and being too tired I mean mentally you know but that's really the really a tiny bit I was mostly uh having to do things behind the scenes we got a new growing season I've got a lot of exciting projects that I want to do right and share with you so I just have to take some time to do that and get these projects up and running and spend the time out in the garden like I said I have been really busy working out here I've had friends helping as well and Nina's now working for us and my son James is now working for us so I'm training them up in the art of YouTube so it's really an exciting and good time and the other thing I'm doing is a lot of writing before it hammers down on me because there's a storm coming um I'm going to be I am writing a book I've had so many people over the years saying Mark can you write a book and finally I'm getting around to doing it so I know it seems like there's a lot of excuses but that's the real Crux of it that's why I haven't been posting a lot on YouTube lately but I am getting back into it and I want to get back into the live streaming as well there's an excuse for that too my live streaming I don't I don't want to live stream from my office I don't want to do it from inside I want to do it from outside I'm an outdoor Channel I'm a Lifestyle Channel and I wanted to bring you live streaming from the garden the problem is how do you do that technically and I was having quite a few troubles trying to get it technically right because I was getting lots of dropouts and all that but I've had a few guys working on our Wi-Fi system and out here and it looks like I might be able to bring you some live streaming soon from wherever I want in our backyard well anyway that's that thanks a lot for watching bye for now that's twice thanks for hanging around cheers bye

Channel: Self Sufficient Me

Views: 308,436

Keywords: how to plant a fruit tree, how to plant a fruit tree in the ground, how to plant a fruit tree in clay soil, how to plant a fruit, how to plant a fruit tree in a pot, how to plant a fruit tree orchard, fruit trees, fruit trees garden, fruit trees in containers, fruit trees in pots, garden, gardening, planting fruit trees in backyard, tree stump, how to, planting fruit trees

Id: M1axh4Qxh6I

Length: 14min 12sec (852 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 21 2023