Creating Fertile Soil On The Site, How Best To Plant Apple Trees

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

The new season is still far away, many gardeners use this time to replenish their knowledge: by studying gardening literature or engaging in hobby clubs - floriculture, horticultural, landscape design. I want to share my experience in a magazine: how we made a completely dry and fertile garden from a damp plot.

It is no secret that not the best land was allocated for gardening, many got swampy areas or areas where the underlying layer is clay or sand. Such are the geological conditions of our North-West. So in 1965 we bought a plot in the village of Verkhnee Roshchino in the gardening of Leningrad State University. By the way, it was founded back in 1950. Roshchinskaya Gorka is the result of glacier activity, and therefore part of the gardening ended up on sandy deposits with an abundance of stones, and part on clay. So we just bought a house and a plot on a clay litter, and on top there was, as it should be, a soil layer. And, of course, it wasn't very big.

Much started almost from scratch. We read the literature and tried to do everything as the experts recommended: they dug holes for apple, plum, cherry, currant and gooseberry bushes. They filled them with everything that was required according to the instructions, and planted them. But, as experience has shown, apple trees planted in pits under our conditions did not live long (10-15 years). They began to hurt, the bark from the bottom of the trunk peeled off, and no vars and attachments helped.

Advice did not help when preparing the beds to make organic bookmarks down under the fertile soil. We tried to do this: a year or two - and the bed settles again, and you need to repeat everything. All humus, laid in a clay pit, or sandy, or peat (I mean the underlying base), is washed out - and again poor soil remains.

We realized that we need to build up the humus layer over the ridges. And now, for many years now, we have been doing the following: after three years of growing garden strawberries, we begin to add grass to this garden bed, small leaves - in a word, garbage, sprinkle a little with ash, add leaves, tops and a little manure on top in the fall (for faster decay). There are two or three such beds after strawberries or after vegetables that we want to improve. In the spring we cover them with black film and make holes in which we sow the seeds of zucchini, squash. Zucchini or squash feel great warm all summer. Watering goes only through the holes, and the zucchini lie on a clean black film all summer.

Two years later, we do the same with the next two or three beds. Transfer the film from the previous ridges. I would like to point out that black film can withstand operation for six to eight years.

We dig up the beds, covered with a black film, after two years of use. We transfer everything that has not rotted there to the compost heap. We water the garden with a solution of copper sulfate, and it is ready for any new culture.

So we raised our entire site, enriched it, increased the fertile soil layer.

I would also like to note that in our conditions it is not necessary to dig deep holes for fruit tree seedlings and berry bushes. Over 40 years of working in the garden, I realized that they should only be planted on mounds, and then various waste from the beds, garbage, and, if not sorry, compost or manure should be laid around the trunk. All this will rot, thereby creating a good breeding ground for small roots of fruit trees or bushes.

Over the past years, trees and bushes have already been planted three times. The last landings were made on the hills. The correctness of this planting method was suggested to me by one apple tree - a wonderful boletus, which is already 40 years old, and it bears fruit every year, giving a larger or smaller crop. I immediately put her on a mound - I was in a hurry, it took time, but actually I wanted to transplant her according to the rules (dig a hole). She took root, and I felt sorry to transplant her. And now she feels good, and her peers have all died. By the way, many gardeners in our gardening (now called "Science") followed our example.

Therefore, I want to say to all gardeners: think more, experiment, taking into account the conditions of your garden and vegetable garden when growing fruits and vegetables. And then success will come.