Five steps to maximize productivity of fruit & nut trees.

1. You need to plan & prepare the soil first if you want maximum productivity. Waiting till you plant is far too late! Ideally you need to prepare the land where you plan to plant fruit or nut trees at least one year before planting. This is because it takes a year to change the soil. You need to put the appropriate fertilizers in the right quantity on the soil a year before planting as it takes the soil life a year to break down into plant food. This means you need a soil test to determine what the mineral deficiencies or excesses are, what your pH is, what the level of organic matter is etc. Once you put the fertilisers on the soil you need to do two other things to complete the preparation: (i) add lots of mulch, preferably wood chips or wood mulch;(ii) add microbes and fungi spores to increase the soil’s wildlife.
2. Two to three months before planting, put in sprinklers in an irrigation system, probably two sprinklers per tree to ensure both sides of the tree will get the essential watering it needs when there is insufficient rain.
3. Once you have acquired the young tree(s) the day you plant there is one more step to do to ensure success. You need to soak the roots in a nutrient-rich solution to promote root growth. There are many suitable solutions available on the market but a good one contains NPK, fulvic acid and a kelp solution.
4. When you plant the tree, you need to dig a hole at least twice the diameter of the container the plant comes in. Do not use a posthole digger for this, as it would compact the soil and make it difficult for the young roots to grow and spread out. When you put the plant in the hole, you only need water and no fertilizer (as you should have all the fertilizer you need from step 1).In the area around the plant you need to put very friable quality soil or peat moss so that the roots can grow outwards easily.
5. The first seven weeks after planting are crucial; you need maximum root growth to achieve the eventual maximum above ground growth and productivity. These 7 weeks determine the eventual size and productivity of the tree. All that is needed in this period if you have prepared properly is water and loving care to ensure it is not harmed by the elements e.g if it is windy, stake the tree. After 7 weeks you can start a monthly program of adding liquid fertilizers. If you want great results, you should do a leaf test after 2 or 3 months and spray on the leaves what is indicated by the leaf test as needed. Once a year do a soil test to determine what granular fertilizers are needed to replace what has been leached out or removed by the trees.
Written by Geoff Buckley, partner in Growing Healthy. For more information go to http://www.growinghealthyorganicfood.com/. (511 words).

Organic farming is not for Sissies no.6

Maintaining Fruit and Nut Tree Orchards

I have had a couple of emails this past week from people who want to know how to maintain fruit trees when they are growing them in lawn areas. By coincidenge, the next video that will be posted on this site deals with this topic and you can see how we maintain our lime trees. For ease of maintenance we have planted them in groups of 30. They are now 3 years old and are growing well.

Barring accidents, which include such things as untimely hail storms or strong winds, the amount of fruit you will get from your fruit trees will be determined by the amount of food that the tree has available to it to create the fruit. If the soil is nutrient rich, well drained and has a high (10% or greater) level of organic matter, then the tree will produce an absolutele abundance as long as there is plenty of water and sunshine. Unfortunately most soils aren't as good as they should be so you have to make a habit of feeding your trees regularly - at least once every couple of months.

Soils are generally deficient in several minerals, have less than optimal organic matters and may be poorly drained or too sandy. My rule is that if I want my trees to produce, say, 100 kg of fruit per year, I will need to feed them the right amount of the food they need so that they can do this. If I value the tree's production at $4 per kilo, then my tree will give me $400 worth of fruit per year. So that it can do this, I give the tree 1/10 of the value of that fruit in the form of nutrients. This means I need to spend $40 per year on each of my trees. If you give your tree nothing, it will give very little in return.

I think an investment of $40 to get $400 worth of fruit is pretty good value, but the problem is that first you have to believe that the tree will give you the fruit and second you have to be prepared to make your investment before you reap the harvest!! Most people think it is sufficient to plant the tree and let nature look after the rest. Unfortunately, it generally doesn't work this way.

To feed your tree you can give it at least some of the following: blood and bone, lime, a really good all purpose fertilizer, molasses, boron, fish or kelp fertilizer, soft rock phosphate, silicon in the form of diatamaceous earth and lots of organic matter. Trees like to be fed regularly, so the rule is a little, often.

Don't dig around the trees. This damages the root systems. Cover the ground area with mulch keeps the weeds under control. Use cardboard to stop light getting to the weeds. Think of the area around your tree as a mulch pile and keep adding to it, remembering not to pile anything too close to the tree truck. Take your mulched area right out to the drip line of the tree so that you can mow right up to it. Weed the area by hand whenever necessary and pile the weeds back under the tree. Weeds make really good mulch.

The reason for not using weedicides around your fruit trees is that the weedicides kill the soils' micro-organisms. Through their root systems, your fruit and nut tree give out 50% of all the sugar they produce through the process of photosynthesis. The reasons they do this is to attract billions of fungi and bacteria to live around their roots. A tree must consider these microscopic creatures must be pretty important for them to give them so much of the food they create. If the trees consider them to be important, don't you think it might be foolish to use weedicides which kill those micro-organisms? All the orchardists I spoke to when writing my book "Transition Farms" told me that once they realised they had to stop using Roundup to control weeds, their whole farming operation improved significantly.

Growing fruit trees is not difficult but it does require on-going investment to keep the trees healthy and productive.

Written by Bev Buckley
For more information go to www.growinghealthyorganicfood.com

Organic farming is not for Sissies no.5

Organic farming is not for Sissies No.4