i'm not going to lie planting fruit trees is not one of my more favorite gardening tasks
but i look at fruit trees as an investment a well-maintained fruit tree can be productive
for decades so i want to take the time to ensure that it gets the best start possible
i am planting a new apricot and nectacot tree in my zone 6a ohio backyard
in very heavy clay and i know a lot of you have had questions about planting fruit trees in clay
soil so i thought today i would share with you my process when planting in clay soil there are a few
specific measures that you'll want to be aware of the first is that even within a
given planting area even if your general soil is clay they're going to be areas that have
more or less clay content and that have worse or better drainage than other areas even within a
small section of yard for instance on my property i don't know if you'll be able to see it well
but the land definitely slopes down toward the east and i have an area over here that is just
incredibly heavy clay extraordinarily poor drainage and i would never dream of trying
to plant anything there without really really working on the soil first so i'm selecting a
spot that's on a little bit higher ground it's still heavy clay but it's got better drainage
if you're unsure about the drainage in different areas of your property one of the
easiest things to do is to dig a test hole and to do this you just want to dig a hole fill it
halfway with water and if it takes longer than two hours for all of that water to drain away
that's going to be a pretty good indication that you don't want to plant there because it is just
too compacted and the drainage is too poor now of course you can always improve the soil in
that area but if you're wanting to plant a fruit tree right away it would be better to
choose a different spot with better drainage once you've found the ideal spot it's time to dig my
dad used to tell me that you want to dig a 50 hole for a five dollar tree and there's a lot of truth
in that old adage the idea being that you want your planting hole to be much larger in size than
your root ball i try to aim for making my planting hole about three times the size of the root mass
that i'm dealing with which usually ends up to be about a three to four foot by three to four foot
hole i find it easiest to bring out a tarp or a large piece of cardboard with me and put all
of my fill dirt on that tarp or cardboard this also makes the end process of backfilling a lot
easier and cleaner and to start my planting hole i typically just scrape off the very top layer of
sod and set it aside now there's something to be said for that five dollar tree statement as well
just a note here that typically a smaller tree is going to transplant more easily than a larger tree
and this is because smaller trees typically suffer from transplant shock less and they have an easier
time adapting to their new planting situation now a word on the actual shape of the planting hole
you may notice that the hole that i'm digging here is a round hole a few years ago there was a myth
running around on the internet that a square planting hole is better than a round planting hole
with the idea being that in a round planting hole the roots start to circle around themselves and
you essentially get the same effect that you have when a plant is pot bound which is that
the roots circle up and choke themselves i'm here to tell you that that is complete bunk you may get
circling roots in a round planting hole but it's not due to the shape of the hole itself it is due
to how that hole is filled many times folks will dig all of the fill dirt out
and when they plant their tree they will instead of putting the native soil back into the planting
hole we'll fill it with all kinds of nice loose fluffy topsoil and compost and wonderful things
which seems like it would be a great idea for your tree what ends up happening is that the tree roots
don't want to move out of that nice soft safe little planting hole that you've created
and they refuse to send their roots out into that hard native clay soil so what you end up with is a
circling of roots within that nice soft planting media basically as in everything with nature
the tree roots are seeking the path of least resistance so i've got my 50 hole dug here and
i want to give you a look at the clay content in this soil now my first few inches i do have
some decent loose topsoil you can see that in particular on the bottom of this sod where this
is fairly nice and crumbly and loose where all of these little grass roots have grown however
as you move deeper and deeper into the hole you get into this kind of yellow and gray clay that
is very very common around here and you can probably see it on the walls of this hole
now this stuff is just when it dries it's like a brick you can see here just how sticky and dense
and potentially poor draining this is and how difficult it would be for plant roots to penetrate
this now as i mentioned i don't want to get the fill dirt inside this planting space so nice and
soft and cushy that my roots don't want to venture out into the native soil but i also want to give
my roots the best chance to put on growth and get well established i also want to get them used to
that clay soil so to plant my fruit trees in clay it's going to take a couple extra steps to do this
the first one being that i want to score the sides of my planting hole and basically what that means
is to rough up the sides of the planting hole so scraping it with your shovel putting gouges
into it anything to kind of break up those what would otherwise be really solid brick like walls
of clay the next step that i take is borrowing a concept from hugelkultur so i make my planting
hole extra deep because in the very bottom i want to add a layer of rotting sticks and wood and bark
kind of any small chunks that i can find and then cover that with leaf mold and then with some of my
fill dirt and what that is going to do is help to provide a little extra space for drainage
as well as adding organic matter to the soil as it decomposes i'm then going to fill in the majority
of my planting hole with the filter that i dug out in the beginning and a little bit of leaf mold i
don't want to go crazy with the organic matter at this point i just want to add a little something
to help improve the soil structure and the organic matter content of the soil by surrounding
your roots with soil which is extremely rich in organic content and food you're giving the tree
another reason to not want to reach out into that native soil to access nutrients so in this case
it's a good thing to make your tree work a little bit so i'm going to actually wait till the very
end of this process and top dress my tree with my compost and manure which i'll show
you in a bit now i want to fill my planting hole to the point where i can set my tree in
and the graft union will be just a few inches above the soil surface now most fruit trees
that you're going to buy nowadays are a grafted fruit tree so this is something to be aware of
if you bury that graft union you take the chance of your scion or the variety that's grafted onto
your root stock actually taking root in the soil and then you're losing the benefits of the root
stock that it is grafted to so this may sound all a bit technical to folks that are brand new to
this but basically fruit trees are often grafted to a root stock for certain benefits most often
size so if you see something like a semi dwarf tree that size is controlled by the root stock
that your fruit tree variety is grafted to some root stocks can also give the tree more vigor
stress resistance disease resistance it depends a lot on the root stock but you definitely want
to keep that graft union above the soil line now if you happen to be planting a non-grafted tree
same idea but you want to keep the root flare or the area of the trunk where the trunk meets
the root mass where it starts to flare out there you want to keep that just a few inches above the
soil surface so i'm going to set my tree at about the height that i think it needs to go
using a shovel across the planting hole to kind of gauge your height is a really nice trick here
and then i'm just going to back fill till my tree is secure
i tamp down the soil around the tree pretty well putting a fair amount of pressure on there with my
feet and then a very very important step i'm gonna water this all in really thoroughly so
typically i will water with two full five gallon buckets more or less depending on how much rain
we've received recently and then i want to let that all settle so i will let this tree sit
for an hour up to as long as overnight or into the next day and this is because
as the water works through the soil things tend to kind of settle and drop down and what i am
looking for is that my tree remains at the height that i planted it so if you're so if you come out
after watering and your tree has dropped two or three inches down into your planting hole
you're going to want to readjust for that add some more fill dirt and then you should be good
now is the time that i add my compost and or aged manure and basically i'm
just going to put an inch or so of this on top of the planting area like a top dress
and then i want to top that all off with a mulch of some kind i typically will use something like
hay grass clippings wood chips leaf mulch or plant a living mulch such as yellow or white clover
we're all done planting but there's a few more things that i want to point out
the first is pruning and when i've got a newly transplanted fruit tree i'm going to
prune very minimally i'm looking to prune only branches that are obviously broken
dead or diseased or any really wonky crossed branches other than that i'm
pretty much going to leave this tree alone for the first couple years
staking is something that i only do on an as needed basis you actually want to allow
your tree to have some movement because this is going to lead to a stronger trunk
and it stimulates root growth now there are some very good reasons to opt for staking
which include things like planting in very very loose or overly wet soil where your tree is
actually shifting in the soil a lot sometimes your crown will be disproportionate to the size of your
trunk in the beginning and you want to give it a little extra support
those are all reasons you might stake but the thing to keep in mind is that you want to stake
loosely enough so that whatever you're using to hold your tree is not digging into the bark
and that it's allowing the tree a little wiggle room and you want to go about two-thirds of the
way up the trunk to support the tree when you are staking it you can see here i have not staked this
tree yet but i do have a tree guard on it now this is a good idea especially for fall planted trees
because what this is going to do is protect the bark on this young tree from gnawing critters like
rabbits and deer who especially love to nibble on tender young tree bark in the winter when
there's not much else to eat which can really do some damage if not completely kill a young fruit
tree spacing is something to keep in mind if you are planting more than one tree and to determine
your spacing you're going to want to know the mature size of the tree that you're planting
so for example with a standard fruit tree you're often going to go as far apart as 30 feet
with a semi dwarf it's usually around 15 the trees that i am planting today are actually
super doors they're a type called a reachable and these can be planted as close together as six feet
related to that is being aware of whether your fruit tree needs a pollinator when you plant so
a lot of apples european pears some plums this apricot in particular they all need a pollinator
so you're going to want to plan for that as well when you are planting your fruit tree
and one last tidbit that you may be wondering about is feeding your tree
the best time to feed fruit trees is very early in the spring so with my fall planted fruit trees
i'm actually going to wait until early next spring to give them an application of a food
formulated for fruit trees i will also be giving them some supplemental calcium at that point
because most fruit trees will benefit from the addition of calcium so i've got this
tree planted i'm going to get to finishing up this one the important part now is just
making sure that these guys receive one to two inches of water per week until the soil really
freezes hard which is actually one of the really nice things about planting in the fall
because we tend to get a lot more moisture and the temperatures stay nice and cool through the months
of october and november so i end up having to do a lot less work watering these guys will get well
established and be ready to jump right into growth as soon as my temperatures warm in the spring
and if you found today's video helpful please consider subscribing to my channel growfully
with jenna for more gardening tips like these thanks for watching and i'll see you next time
you