When And How To Plant Trees And Bushes

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

To make the garden fruitful

Special horticultural literature devoted to the issues of mass planting of fruit trees and berry bushes is not designed for owners of garden plots planting single trees and bushes. Considering this, all the recommendations available in such literature on the choice of seedlings, the timing of their planting and the preparation of the planting site need significant adjustment if they are used in small garden plots.

Based on my experience and the experience of many summer residents and gardeners, I think that choosing seedlings is best in autumn, since at this time it is much easier to assess their quality. Moreover, as a rule, the choice is much wider. The seedlings still have healthy leaves, mature wood, and a developed root system. And also, importantly, they are often cheaper.

In the spring, it is much more difficult to determine the quality of the seedlings, since they are sold from the ditch, the conditions of their wintering are unknown, and it is highly likely that the roots will be frozen. It is far from always known in which zone the seedling grew, on which rootstock it was grafted. The result of all this can be the death of the plant soon after planting, which the author and other gardeners and summer residents have encountered more than once.

Practice also shows that in the fall it is much easier to choose not a three-four-year-old, but a one-two-year-old seedling, which has a balance between the underground and aboveground parts, the root system is healthier, and most importantly, the central root is well preserved when digging, which goes deeper after planting. food and moisture. If this root is not preserved or is weakened, then the tree or bush is doomed to starvation and, as a result, to slow growth, and often death. Injuries to only individual roots that were not previously noticed or occurred during the transportation of seedlings can be easily corrected if they are immediately cut to healthy wood.

If you follow the literary recommendations, then the spring planting of the seedling dooms it to death twice: in the winter, in the prikop, and in the spring, after planting in the icy ground. To avoid this, plants should be purchased and planted in a permanent place in the fall, when the ground is still warm. At the same time, so that the seedlings do not freeze, before frost, you need to put a box or barrel without a bottom on the tree and pour a mixture of earth and foliage there. Or you can simply drive four pegs around the seedling at a distance of 60 cm and make a frame for the soil from planks, burlap or other material.

In the spring, as soon as the snow melts, the frame must be removed, the mixture is distributed around the trunk and watered. At the same time, as my personal experience of twelve such plantings testifies, the tree quickly begins to grow and develops well. In my garden for all the time there was not a single case of the death of seedlings with such a planting.

If you believe the special literature, fruit trees and berry bushes should be planted in pits 40-60 cm deep and 80-100 cm in diameter. Practice shows that on heavy clay soil this often leads to the death of trees and shrubs after four to five years, when the pit will run out of nutrients, and with a high level of groundwater, the plant dies in the first year after planting. This is due to the fact that the root system of a plant in clay soil does not find nutrients and develops only within the pit, and being in ice water, it simply suffocates without oxygen. To avoid the death of the plant, in any heavy soil and in soil with a high level of groundwater, the size of the holes should be doubled, and in the first case, the hole should be made much deeper,and in the second, you need to plant seedlings on mounds or an earthen embankment 50-60 centimeters high.

In addition, in both cases, as my many years of experience show, in order for trees and bushes to take root well, get stronger and grow, various waste should be put on the bottom of the pits (pieces of wood, chips, cardboard, cans, small glass containers, the remains of plastic bottles and others) with a layer of up to 30 cm, then - a layer of sod 20 cm. And all this is sprinkled with a mixture of sawdust and shavings with lime, and a layer of garden soil with compost and complete mineral fertilizer is laid on top.

With such a planting, trees and bushes acquire a kind of double support in 3-4 years, because part of the roots penetrates through the subsoil "pillow", and part, receiving a large amount of nutrients, quickly grows in breadth. At the same time, the roots are well insulated from the cold coming from below and from the sides, do not freeze and begin to vegetate much earlier. Their buds and foliage appear much earlier, which means that they begin to bloom and bear fruit earlier.

And I also want to say about one well-established stereotype. Special literature recommends growing fruit trees and berry bushes under the so-called "black fallow" as opposed to being kept in turfed soil. But if in the first case, as practice shows, in the upper layer of the soil subjected to systematic cultivation - digging, loosening, etc. - the roots and rhizomes of trees and bushes are often damaged and destroyed, the humus content gradually decreases and nutrition worsens, then in the second, as a result of regular mowing of the grass and leaving it in place as a mulch cover, an additional source of nutrition appears, created by the decomposition of organic matter saturated with microorganisms and worms. At the same time, the root system, receiving good nutrition and moisture, becomes more developed, enhancing growth,development and fruiting of trees and shrubs. For example, in the author's garden, kept in a turf, the productivity of apple and sea buckthorn increased by about one and a half times.

Summing up, I want to say that all the agricultural practices considered here can be recommended for wider distribution.