How To Plant A Tree Correctly? Timing, Fertilization, Care. Photo

2023 Author: Ava Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-08-25 07:50

It would seem that a fairly simple task is to take and plant a tree. But in fact, this is a whole range of activities that you must know about and observe all of them. Otherwise, you can get a completely different result that every gardener dreams of. With the wrong, untimely planting of the tree, you can achieve a much smaller harvest or not wait for it at all, or, instead of the allotted couple of years from planting to the first harvest, wait for fruits two, or even three times longer. So how do you plant a tree correctly? We will talk about this in this article.

Content:

• Planting dates for fruit trees
• The nursery is the best place to buy
• Each seedling has its own place
• Distance between seedlings
• Fertilizing the soil before planting
• Features of creating a landing hole
• How to place a seedling in a hole?
• The first care of the seedling

Planting dates for fruit trees

It is known that trees can be planted both in spring and autumn. The optimal time in spring is before bud break. In most of the territory of Russia, it is April. In autumn, planting should be completed 15-20 days before the onset of stable cold weather. Usually trees are planted in October, when the soil is wet, it is no longer hot and not yet cold.

Knowing the timing of planting, everyone can decide for himself when it is more convenient for him to plant a tree. Naturally, there is less time in spring: there are many things to do and it is not always possible to plant a tree before bud break; autumn is a quieter time, and the selection of seedlings in nurseries is the largest. If you buy a tree in the fall, deciding to plant it in the spring, you will have to dig it somewhere and protect it from rodents.

The nursery is the best place to buy

The very first rule of planting any tree begins with choosing where to buy it. It is best to buy trees in nurseries. It is advisable that the nursery in which you are going to purchase a seedling successfully existed in your city for at least a couple of years. It is in the nursery that you can get a full-fledged seedling of any tree, corresponding to the variety, free from diseases and not infected with pests.

However, even there, when buying, be sure to inspect the root system, the aerial part of the plant, and if you do not find rot, scuffing of the bark, overdried roots, then the seedling can be purchased. By the way, it is best to transport a seedling to its site by dipping its root system in a clay mash, sprinkling the roots with sawdust and wrapping them in a plastic bag.

Each seedling has its own place

In order for the tree to grow successfully on your site, you need to find it in its place. The overwhelming majority of trees will grow well in an illuminated area, without shade, without depressions and depressions (places where melt or rain water accumulates), on soils with a groundwater level located at least two meters to their surface.

It is great if on the north side there is protection in the form of a wall of a house, a fence or other structure, not a single tree will refuse this. Look for an area where the crop you are planting has not grown before, or at least five or six years ago. Do not plant, say, an apple tree again, an apple tree, and so on. Why?

Everything is simple: in addition to the fact that a certain type of culture sucks out of the soil its characteristic set of elements in the required amount, it also "enriches" the soil with pests and diseases, hibernating or sleeping, which are immediately activated as soon as the same is found in this place again culture.

The type of soil is also important, because the optimal place is not only where it is light, even and moisture does not stagnate. The vast majority of trees will grow well only on nutritious and loose soil, such as black soil, loam and the like. You should not plant trees on sandy or very dense clay soil without preliminary preparation of the substrate: loosening (adding river sand or, for example, buckwheat husks) is in the case of clay soil or, conversely, compaction (adding clay to the soil in a loose state, usually a bucket per square meter) - in the case of sandy soil.

The pH level, i.e. the balance of acid and alkali, is also of course important. The best option is usually a pH of 6.0 to 7.0, if it is higher, then this soil is alkaline, lower is acidic, few trees like such soils. You can check the pH level with an ordinary litmus test by diluting a piece of soil in water and dipping it there. The color in which the paper will be painted will indicate the pH level. A set of litmus papers and scales can be purchased at any garden center.

Distance between seedlings

In this case, we are talking about the landing pattern. Trees, whatever they are, certainly do not like thickening. While the seedling is young with a thin stem and a couple of steps, it seems that even a meter of free area is quite enough, but after five years, when a powerful above-ground mass is formed, the crown of your tree will begin to interfere with neighboring trees or shrubs, it will begin to reach for the light, it may begin to bend or will become ugly one-sided, and then nothing can be done with the tree - it's too late.

To avoid trouble, do not be greedy, plant large trees so that the distance from other trees is at least three meters, this should be enough for the full development of the crown.

Fertilizing the soil before planting

Before planting, when you have decided on the place and scheme, you need to properly prepare the soil. Outwardly, it seems as if all the soil is the same, it is black or gray, closer to brown, and so on. In fact, the composition of the soil is, one might say, unique. In one area, only potassium may be enough to meet the needs of a tree, in another - nitrogen, and in a third, all three main elements for the full development of a tree will not be enough.

So, in order to neutralize the risk of tree starvation after planting, the soil must be fertilized before planting. Fertilizers are usually applied for digging the soil, distributing well-rotted manure or humus (4-5 kg per 1 m ²), wood ash (250-300 g per 1 m ²) and nitroammofoska (a tablespoon per 1 m ²) over the surface. Usually, these fertilizers will be enough for the tree to start fully developing in a new place.

When preparing the soil, be sure to remove all weeds, in particular - wheatgrass rhizomes, they are the first competitors to the seedling, and at the initial stage of the tree's life on the new site they should not be. Wheatgrass, by the way, can restore its growth even if only one centimeter of its root remains in the soil.

Features of creating a landing hole

When the soil is ready, you can start creating planting holes. This procedure is usual, not complicated, but it has its own rules. For example, you need to dig holes, making the edges even, 25-30% larger than the volume of the root system of the tree, and dig them at least a couple of weeks before planting the seedling.

Preliminary digging of the hole will allow the soil to settle even before the seedling is placed in it, then there will be no unpleasant surprise in the form of a failed seedling a couple of days after planting. At the bottom of the hole, be sure to arrange drainage from expanded clay, broken brick or pebbles.

Drainage is loved by most trees; it will not allow water to stagnate at the root system and thereby exclude its decay. On top of the drainage, it is necessary to pour a nutrient layer, as gardeners call it, a nutritional pillow. It should consist of a mixture of humus and nutritious soil (usually the topsoil is the most nutritious) in equal proportions with the addition of 50 g of wood ash and 15-20 g of nitroammofoska to the composition. Before placing the root system of the seedling in the hole, it must be well watered.

How to place a seedling in a hole?

We proceed directly to the landing. So, the hole is ready, filled with fertilizers, watered and 12-14 days have passed, the soil has settled and the tree can be planted in a permanent place.

It is advisable to start planting with the installation of a support peg, it must be placed exclusively from the north side. A support peg is necessary to keep the tree upright for the first time, until the seedling gets stronger. After installing it, you need to take our tree in your hands and examine its trunk well. On the trunk you can see the darker side and the lighter side.

The dark side is usually south, the light side is north. If you want the tree to quickly take root in a new place, you need to place it this way: so that the darker side faces south, and the light side faces north. This way we will plant the tree the way it used to grow in the nursery, and the stress from replanting will be at least slightly reduced.

Further, when planting, first lower the seedling into the hole and gently straighten its roots so that they look to the sides, do not bend, break and are not directed upward from the hole.

In general, it is more convenient to plant any tree together, one person must hold it tightly by the trunk, the other sprinkle the roots with soil. When backfilling the roots with soil, try to twitch the seedling a little so that all the voids between the roots are filled with soil, and not with air. When planting, we advise you to compact the soil layer by layer, that is, sprinkle it lightly - compact it a little, then again - pour the soil, compact it again, and so on until the hole is filled.

When planting, it is extremely important to ensure that the root collar (the place where the roots go into the trunk) is necessarily just above the soil surface, at least a centimeter or a little more. It seems that this is a trifle, in fact, if you deepen the root collar, then the tree will immediately slow down in growth, and the entry into the season of fruiting will be greatly delayed (in stone fruit crops, for example, even the root collar may dry out, and the tree will simply die).

You should not let everything go by itself, hoping for "maybe", even if you later "dig out" the root collar, then a depression will form around it and moisture, getting on the soil surface, it does not matter with rain or watering, will stagnate in this depression, and the root collar will also rot.

After the root system is completely covered with soil, it is necessary to compact the soil, straighten the tree so that it stands upright, tie it to the peg with a "figure eight" to prevent constriction, then pour the soil with a couple of buckets of water and be sure to mulch the soil surface with humus with a layer of a couple of centimeters …

Humus is a very good mulch, when planted in autumn it will save moisture from evaporation and prevent freezing of the root system of the seedling, and when planting the seedling in spring, a layer of mulch in the form of humus will be additional nutrition, prevent the formation of a soil crust and inhibit the growth of weeds.

The first care of the seedling

If you think that planting is over when the seedling is immersed in the soil, then you are mistaken. There are several actions that are carried out after landing, but they should still be included in the list of essential landing measures. In the autumn, this is the protection of young trees from rodents. Usually, after planting, the stem is wrapped in a plastic net up to a height of about 60 cm, and poisoned bait is scattered around the seedling.

When planting in spring, it is necessary to protect the young tree trunk from sunburn by whitening it.

After all this, we can confidently say that the landing is over. As you can see, there is nothing difficult in planting a tree on your site, and if everything is done correctly, then the tree will soon bring its first harvest, which will only grow from year to year.