When Is The Best Time To Fertilize Fruit Trees & Berry Shrubs? How Much & How Often?

welcome back everyone today I got an important topic I want to cover with everyone for all you backyard growers out there if you're growing fruit trees or berry shrubs today we're going to be going over fertilization [Music] we're gonna be talking about fertilization when's the best time to fertilize how often should you fertilize and what's the best fertilizer to use now if you've been watching this channel for some time then you're aware I haven't gone over this topic all that much there are some reasons for that I want to share with you one being I'm really into creating natural soil fertility I like to aim to go beyond organic gardening and create a natural self-sustaining model one of the best ways to do that is to bring in the mulch into your garden whether it's woodchips leaves broken down grass clippings and also doing some chop and drop both of these things are going to help build soil fertility it's going to bring that nutrition the minerals to the plants and require that you fertilize quite a bit less one of my favorite plants for doing chop and drop is the comfrey now the comfrey is growing all throughout my backyard food forest and the reason why this plant is such a good chop and drop is because it has a very deep taproot can go down about ten feet and it mines those minerals and nutrients from deep down below the soil surface where your average fruit tree and other plants growing in your garden are unable to reach it brings that nutrition into the leaves so when you chop them and you mulch around your plants you're essentially feeding the plants those deep down minerals and nutrients another technique I like to employ that's an in-house closed-loop part of my system is to create worm castings here on site now I've got a bathtub worm bin that creates an enormous amount of worm castings you can use all sorts of different materials to create a bin and just by feeding those worms our leftover kitchen scraps some of the plant matter that I chopped from the garden we're able to create some high quality worm castings that can be fed directly to your plants just at the base or even better yet you can make a compost tea where you aerate the compost with some non-chlorinated water for a 24 hour period and you're gonna proliferate the microbes which are really good for the soil breaking down organic matter creating a nice houmous sow and also you're adding in the nutrients from the worm castings and also like to add liquid kelp into my compost tea brew which adds some minerals so that's a really low-cost way to continue to add soil fertility and save you a bunch of money how you doing over there sweetie so as you can see over here I've featured this in many videos but we've got the Santa Rosa plum and also the flavor grenade pluot side by side about a foot and a half apart this is a two-in-one planting and just look at the blooms we got on this tree this tree has only been fertilized with a granular store-bought fertilizer one time over the last eight years and you can see the production here so soil fertility really comes into play which by the way a great idea would be to do a soil test if you're wondering what your soil might be deficient in and what elements that you may need to feed your fruit trees and shrubs in order to get the best productivity yet another important consideration when it comes to fertilizing is the age of the fruit tree or berry shrub now when you first get to planting you put a bare root fruit tree in the ground you're going to avoid doing any fertilization the reason for that is the young tender roots on the bare root are susceptible to getting burned by the fertilizer so many folks such as myself recommend not fertilizing for the first two to three years after planting either a fruit tree or a berry shrub and that's a great way to go that's also going to save you a bunch of money but once you get these more mature trees like you see here again eight year old tree here eight year old tree here these trees have been in the ground long enough now that this whole time they've been taking up the elements they need to produce some nice lush growth with a lot of fruiting and budding wood and so at this point it can be a good idea to give it a boost and add in some fertilizer so what kind of fertilizer should you be using well when you go to the store you're gonna have a couple different options you're going to have a granular fertilizer which is more of a slow feed which is what I prefer well you're also going to have soluble fertilizers so a liquid fertilizer that you're going to dilute in water and feed the plant which is going to just hit the plant immediately you're going to get immediate boost but it's not going to feed for quite as long so you're going to be using less of that and you're gonna be fertilizing more often so when you do go to the store you're gonna see on the front or the side of the bag or maybe even the back an analysis a breakdown of the NPK value so what is mpk anyway well the n stands for nitrogen the P stands for phosphorous and the K stands for potassium and they all do different things for your fruit trees and shrubs nitrogen is going to create a vigorous flush of new green growth and that's not necessarily what we're looking to do when we're growing fruit trees in our yard the aim for most growers is going to be to keep a lower canopy on your tree something that's easily accessible and also you're going to not have a 20-foot tree that you can't reach the fruit and you're inviting in the wildlife to harvest those fruits you may never get to them so having a lower canopy is a great benefit to us backyard growers especially and so by adding too much nitrogen which actually doing is creating a lot of vigorous woody growth new green growth it's going to create a nice large tree for you a nice shade tree but not necessarily the best for actually growing fruit now really what we want and a fertilizer is a lower nitrogen value a higher phosphorus value and a higher potassium value the phosphorus is going to help in aid in the root development at the plant the stronger the roots the further they reach out the stronger the tree and the more fruits are going to be able to produce and the potassium is great for developing budding and fruiting wood so here's a couple different granular fertilizers that are available at my local big-box store now as you can see this one state's fruit tree fertilizer just a general statement this one says Citra tones citrus and avocado food you're going to see rose fertilizer grass fertilizer truth be told none of the titles even though they try to hone in to what's going to work best for those particular plants is necessarily what you want to be looking at that NPK value is the most important so let's take a quick look here at the Citra tone citrus avocado food you don't see an NPK value no numbers on the front of the bag but on the side here you can see we got the five to six so it's a five in nitrogen a two in phosphorus and a six in potassium this isn't quite a balanced fertilizer it's higher in nitrogen than we really want to use but this will still work not just for citrus and avocado but for all fruit trees again with that higher nitrogen level you're going to be creating more vigorous growth now let's take a quick look at this Kellogg organic plus fruit tree fertilizer another granular fertilizers are available at your local box stores now I like this because it also contains beneficial soil microbes just like when we're applying our compost tea great for creating a humid so breaking down that soil and creating a little fertilizer factory on the natural level for your trees and your plants to feed on and micro Razi now micro raisa is a fungi which will spread and connect to the feeder roots of your plants and expand how far they can reach out and pick up water and nutrients so it's very beneficial but as we look on this bag we don't see any three-digit numbers anywhere here but as we look on the back of the bag here you can see under the guaranteed analysis section we have an M PK of 4 5 4 so a 4 percent total nitrogen 5 percent available phosphate and then 4 percent soluble potash so not to be confused phosphate is the same as phosphorus and the potage is the same as potassium so again even this fertilizer which is designated for fruit trees is a bit high in the nitrogen versus the phosphorus and potassium so what I'd really recommend if you can get your hands on it would be like a 210 10 which is available or even a 3 5 5 something around there would be a great option for fruiting trees and very shrubs but either of these or any balanced fertilizer with an NPK a 5 5 5 are going to work so sometimes it just comes down to what's available to you and the total cost of the product so I get that all right so now that we've discussed m PK value and what's the best ratio for growing fruit trees and berry shrubs at home what's the best time to start your fertilization schedule so this is going to be different for everyone depending on where you're located but here in the northern hemisphere it's going to range somewhere between late February and May and what we're looking for is for our dormant fruit trees most of which are going to be deciduous and have lost all their leaves to start to erupt with new life in the case of citrus and loquat tree what I'm looking for is for the new tender little leaves to start to develop and that's when I know that tree is waking up and starting to produce new flushes of growth but here we've got an apple tree and you can see a lot of the buds are just starting to come out of dormancy they're going from that woody look to a little furry up toward the tips you can see we got some little gray growth there developing this tree is just waking up and this is a great time we're just about in the middle of March to fertilize this tree now over here we've got an a priam tree and this tree started waking up a few weeks ago that would have been the best time to fertilize but I'm actually just getting around to it today which is fine because even though we've already had some flowering and even a little bit of fruit set there's still a lot of budding and flowers just starting to pop on this tree so it's not too late to do your first round of fertilization on a tree that's at this stage and here we've got a pomegranate tree again just beginning to wake up see those little leaves starting to develop on the tree great time to start your fertilization schedule so what's the best way to apply a fertilizer and how much are we going to use well for that we're gonna look at the tree and we're going to determine the amount of fertilizer we use based upon the girth of the trunk now for every inch in diameter trunk growth you're going to use approximately a pound of most granular fertilizers of course the higher the empty K the less fertilizer you're going to need so read the bag and see what they actually recommend on using but that's just a general rule basically and we're gonna fertilize around the drip line of the tree we want to do is not apply it right next to the base of the tree that can actually be harmful but instead around the drip line now the drip line is the area from the trunk that reaches out about as far as your branches come out so in this case we've got about four and a half five feet of growth from the trunk of this tree so I'm going to be putting my fertilizer in about five feet in a circle around this tree and even come out about a foot from there and work that into the soil a little bit using a cultivator and this here is a cultivator just a little handheld rake and this is going to help you to work that granular fertilizer just a little bit into the surface so it doesn't just blow away and to streamline this whole operation it'd be a good idea to weigh out whether you're using a measuring cup or a scooper of some sort what a full scoop or a cup of the fertilizer weighs that way you can just kind of eyeball as you go around you don't have to think about it too much so we've just got a little kitchen scale here imma be using this ice scooper here great take about a half a scoop here and that is 1.2 pounds so I know just a little under a half a scoop using my scooper is approximately a pound now I'm just gonna pull back some of this mulch right around the drip line and a little beyond and it's fine that I have other plants growing around here they'll benefit from this fertilizer as well now this tree here has been in the ground for several years it has about a five five and a half inch diameter trunk so we're gonna be adding in about five pounds of fertilizer now as you do this I recommend airing on the side of caution it's always better to add less fertilizer than too much too much fertilizer can be detrimental to your plants so if anything save yourself a little money and add a little bit less so if a full scoop is around two pounds we're gonna add two and a half scoops and we just want to evenly distribute it all this fertilizer now we're just gonna work that in to the surface a little bit that cultivator tool now the best time to do this is actually after a rain event not just before as that can flush a lot of these nutrients out of the soil if you get a heavy rain event we've had some good rains come in recently I'm just going to put that mulch right back over where we just fertilized and that's all there is to it just took a couple minutes the trees now fertilized if you want give it a little bit of water just help seep some of that in immediately so now that we've done our initial fertilization here as the trees are just beginning to wake how many more times should I fertilize the trees or berry shrubs throughout the season as a general rule about three times a year is good every two months or so so I just did my first feeding here in the middle of March so I'll do it again in May and then towards the end of June early July now you want to avoid doing fertilization late summer the reason for that is you don't want to create too much new growth as you get towards the end of summer and temperatures start to cool down because the new growth is the most tender and as you enter into fall and winter and you start to get into the lower temperatures that can create some damage for the tree so there's really no point fertilizing at that point besides you've already created all the fruiting bud and flowers for the year so over here I've got an aronia berry shrub now this Berry is a very powerful high in antioxidant fruit actually three times the antioxidants as blueberries which is why I choose to grow it in my garden over blueberries there may come a day but they're just so low-maintenance prolific and because of that nutrient quality I love growing the aronia berries it's an acquired taste some folks don't like it but if you can add them into a smoothie that's one of the best ways to consume the berry just makes a whole shake turn purple you don't have too many greens in there and it's just definitely delicious so you know you're never going to get as large a diameter as with the fruit trees so I go off a couple different things and that is the spread of the plant and the age of the plant but for most berry shrubs unless you got a really large plant a couple cups is going to be adequate but again refer to the back of the packaging and read the directions and see what the recommendations are for the fertilizer you're using but again I'm not going to apply right at the base of the plant but I'm going to go at the drip line so we're the farthest branches come out that's where I'm going to start my fertilization I'm just going to eye out a couple cups evenly distributed lightly scraped into the surface don't want to damage any roots bring back to mulch [Music] I'm going to go ahead and water this fertilizer in a bit on both berry shrubs and the fruit trees [Music] and again I do prefer the granular fertilizer it's great because it's a slow-release it's not going to hit the tree all at once but instead as it breaks down as you water as the rain comes in it's going to slowly break down and feed the tree over a long duration of time so over that two-month period in between feedings you're going to get constant nutrition to your tree or shrub so that's the gist of it guys I'm in no way implying that you absolutely have to fertilize but I decided to actually do quite a bit of fertilization this year and weigh the difference is again everything I do in my garden is an investment so if I see a bigger payoff in terms of fruit in budding wood I'm going to be happy with that and that's going to definitely be worth the time the effort the cost that it took to apply the fertilizer as long as we're over here I wanted to show you this with stereo vine here it is just banging out all these beautiful flower buds we're gonna have a beautiful with stereo vine graces with its fragrant beautiful flowers here in no time at all it would also be a good time to fertilize wisteria well everybody that's going to wrap up today's video I sure do appreciate you all tuning in if you enjoyed today's video or found entertaining in some way I sure would appreciate a thumbs up if you're new to the channel I'd like to invite you to subscribe new uploads every week sometimes every day and I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend if you can get out into the garden get at least one thing done a day it's going to set you off in the right trajectory so that you have yourself an abundant harvest this growing season and so with that I hope this video finds you and finds you well the toe next time this is Dan from plant abundance comm take care I'll be talking to you again soon [Music] you

Channel: Plant Abundance

Views: 44,285

Rating: 4.9211102 out of 5

Keywords: Fertilizer, Fruit tree fertilizer, fertilizing fruit trees, fertilizing berry plants, Fertilizer schedule, Growing Fruit Trees, NPK, Garden fertilizer, Organic fertilizer, Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, plants, Gardening, Backyard Orchard, Food Forest

Id: drjRuLZEssQ

Length: 19min 47sec (1187 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2019