As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
I found an interesting text on New England fruit trees from 1847 AD in the year of our Lord. It was an interesting treatise from the library of Count Egon Caesar Corti.
In this volume, it speaks that fruit trees, unlike timber trees with deep tap roots, instead require a soil of good requirement of approximately 2 feet, for the fruit tree gains nourishment from this place.
What is most fascinating is how they describe the need to not grow fruit trees in wet or cold soils, because in the north, the sun swells the buds with sap by natural heat expansion, and begins the process of bloom or bud.
This must be followed up by a warming of the soil, so the roots will be able to complete the process. One can not have hearty bloom nor leaf, if it is retarded by dehydration, due to the soil being frozen or too cold for the root sap to be drawn up to the tree.
As I would add to this, they state that the sap then returns to the roots throughout the entire tree to nourish it. This brings then about a necessity of deep watering while fruiting in a constant early measure, as constant over watering produces inferior fruits not sweet, but bland, and which do not keep as long.
All of this is proven out in the Sugar Maple, in sap only flows upward in the days of freezing nights and warm days. After this period is passed, the sap does not flow in quantity, proving what the John M. Ives is recording as correct.
The Maple is a tree whose roots are shallow, and not deep like an elm. It therefore is stimulated by the soil warming early in the season, exactly as this treatise explains for fruit trees in their necessary production of fruit.
So the reality is, that while a well drained location where a tree will not drown, but where water is more prone to collect is an asset, it is as harmful to plant trees in places were the soil remains cold for too long in spring as it is to place trees on a south slope, where the roots dry out and the blossoms bud to early and then freeze off.
Some areas of this world are a garden of Eden where one just throws things at the ground and they grow. I offer my Lame Cherry mode of planting trees or shrubs for areas which are not blessed with abundance of moisture, and plants are freeze dried or sun baked.
The best tool for planting is the round nosed tile spade, a cloth or garbage sack, a pair of gloves, rubber boots and a large coffee can.
Your first order of business is to place your tree in the plastic container it has come, on the spot you are going to plant it. I have a rule for you, that if you are planting your tree closer to your house than what you can toss gloves, you are going to regret it.
Use your spade and cut around the pot generously, to an almost 2 feet wide hole.
Move the tree back out of the way, and now cut that sod out with your spade, and put it on the windward side of your plastic bag or cloth to hold it in place.
Now start digging in using the spade to loosen the soil, and use your coffee can to pile the dirt next to the sod. Do not worry about if the hole is deep enough, as you do not get to stop until you notice your spade is the width of your hand deeper on the place you are putting your foot, than the soil level. That is 4 inches.
Once you get that done, stick your space into the bottom of the hole and loosen the soil up there again, but leave it in the hole.
Now take your spade and measure it on your tree to the place of the soil line it is planted. Spit on your glove and mark that spot on your spade, and then with your coffee can start filling the bottom of the hole until your spade is at that mark, 3 inches from the top of your grass or soil.
Gently pack that dirt in to get that 3 inch mark.
Next lay the tree on it's side by the hole and remove the plastic. If you are rich, you can cut it, but for poor people like me, I gently guide the tree out of the pot as I reuse the containers.
Sit the tree carefully, not disturbing the dirt around it, into the hole. Look at it, to make sure it is level, and it is the side you desire to be seen, and then start filling in the dirt, and use your foot to pack in the soil to make the tree secure.
Pack the dirt in to the depth it is planted in the pot, and you should now have a hole which is perfect for turning your hose on and gently watering the tree in.
Do not be scotch with water. (I suppose that would be racist if it was don't be a Nigger with water or a don't Jew the water, as no one cares about racism against white folks.) Water the hole full to overflowing, and when it is gone, do it again. Three times is not too much the first day if your live in an arid climate.
Come back the next day and water it in again twice.
You can put decorative stones around the tree to reduce washing away of soil, wood chips or grass from your mowing.
If you have rabbits, put a drain tile around the tree to protect it in winter, and you really should put a wire cage around it of some kind to protect it, as dogs piss on it, cats claw on it and rabbits eat it.
If the snow gets deep enough the voles will chew the young bark off killing the tree. In that all you can do is cut it off, let it resprout, and then graft a bud back onto it to make it a tree again.
Ounce of prevention negates a pound of cure.
Water your tree even if it rains, once a week with a heavy soaking. The biggest problem in young trees is not enough water so it takes several more years for them to fight to get their tap root down.
Watering is also frost protection from killing a young tree as dry ground freezes and kills trees.
I plant as early in the spring as I can dig to let the tree adjust in that more damp element.
Some God's country locations like New England, one waters a tree once and that is it for the season. In the American westering interior, that will either get one dead trees of stumpy dwarf trees.
Do not try and leave out the implements I told you to acquire in this. You will regret it as you dig a hole and never have enough dirt to refill it, you get your shoes dirty and are upset afterwards, you leave the coffee can and you get frustrated in the spade not moving dirt, you think your shovel is good enough and it will not dig right so you get tired, and you leave the gloves and you grab some buried glass in the ground and cut yourself.
I have done all of the above, and that finger hurt for a decade as I sliced a nice chunk into my finger, and then closed it up with a bandage, but the nerve did not forget.
That should help you in tree planting. I am sort of becoming as snob now in growing things from seed and then transplanting. I do know from experience, that the best plants I have had, were either mine I directly transplanted or from my brother or neighbors in which I could plant them within the hour.
I suffered from some of the greatest disappointments and heartaches in following directions from the experts who lived in Eden, and it was only through financial loss and coming to my own methods that I reached any success.
Apples never do well in Citrus areas, as apples need chill and never appreciate the high heat. Most fruits do not like high humidity as in the South. There is a reason things grow from New York to Minnesota, down to Iowa and over to Virginia, and then with irrigation into Colorado, western Montana for the sweet cherries, over to the coast.
The rest of America one has to work at fruit.
In a sojourn through eastern Kansas and Missouri, I was stunned those Zone 5 areas are basically void of fruit trees. An apple or peach tree is never witnessed and it must be from experience that fruits do not do well there, due to intense heat and humidity in the summer. Go into Ohio and the blueberry bushes there take one hostage.
There must be areas though which would grow fruit in the middle plains, as Francis Parkman speaks of the native fruits in the eastern parts in how lush they were in the 1800's.
I am off to browse some more which may appear here, if I find something interesting in starting wee baby trees from seeds, as that is why I was involved in this publication in the first place.
Oh and for the "too deep" in planting charge. My method allows for natural filling in of the watering hole, as takes place in the forest, with the additional reality, that the tree stump actually fills in the hole. So no danger of suckers or graft rot.
.....and by the second week of August, start shorting your trees to stop new growth if they have not already stopped, as keeping a tree too green will cause it only to freeze out in cold locations. Let it settle in, and then after leaf drop from frost, water it until freeze up to keep it hydrated.
nuff said
agtG
