How To Plant Fruit Trees In Less-Than-Optimal Soil

There’s all kinds of considerations to make when picking a homestead or bugout location. One of the things you need to consider is how well the soil can grow what you want to plant… with us, we knew we wanted to plant fruit trees.

When picking a house for your family, the ability of the soil to grow food is most likely a very low priority unless your family are first and foremost homesteaders or gardeners.

Choose the best ground you can… if you can.. 

When we bought The Place, our bugout location, we knew that we were going to get land with a LOT of clay in the soil, as well as land that is quite hilly. These two factors were part of what made the land affordable for us. 

For most things we want to grow, we recognize that we are going to have to put in a lot of work to make the soil good enough for our fruit trees to grow.

For us, our biggest problem is heavy clay, which collects water and doesn’t let the roots spread out like we want them to, limiting our fruit trees’ nutrition and root strength, and perhaps drowning them in the water. For you, it may be too rocky of soil, it may be a soil pH problem, it may be too sandy, too dry, or have some other issue.

Here’s a step-by-step guide how we plant fruit trees to give them a good enough start to work their way through the clay, have a strong central root system and to thrive in less-than-ideal conditions.  Are we master tree growers?  No.  But the first of our plantings are coming into their sixth year and have been bearing well for two years, and even last year’s baby trees are putting out their first buds.  The method’s working.

Choosing the location

We don’t have great soil for fruit trees; but we can give them some of their other desires.  Since the clay holds water so ambitiously, we plant on the upper parts of slopes and on the ridges to aid the drainage.  That also limits late frost damage, most extreme in the valleys. We make sure to give them as much sun as the variety likes and to be comfortably close to multiple pollinator partners, if the variety is not self-pollinating.

Choosing the plant

Bad soil stresses plants, and stressed plants are more susceptible to disease.  We make toughness, including disease resistance, a priority.  Practically every variety “prefers fertile, well-drained soil”, but some sorts can tolerate worse; we read around for the more tolerant sorts.  We also pay attention to what varieties are already growing well in similar locations. 

Methley Plum

The plant we put in today was a Methley Plum. According to our favorite online tree vendor, Stark Bro’s, the “tree looks great year-round. In summer, this variety yields sweet, purple-red plums; in spring, it offers white, fragrant flowers; and in fall and winter, the tree offers structural interest and a great place to hang holiday lights.

A heavy bearer, Methley grows clusters of plums all throughout the tree. Disease-resistant to fungal diseases like rust. A superb pollinator for other Japanese plum fruit trees. Heat-tolerant. Clingstone. Originates in South Africa, introduced to America in 1922. Ripens in mid July. Self-pollinating.”

Clingstone are not my favorite plums … but I traded that for all that tolerance and (importantly), self-pollinating.  We don’t put in trees that have just *one* suitable pollination partner within reach.  “Two is One” is a real thing in Prepper-Land; and doubly so when the plant may live for decades and becomes effectively useless without a pollination partner.

We, however, didn’t buy ours from them, we are trying an experiment. We purchased the very healthy looking tree from a local big-box store, the first time we have tried using this method of buying a tree.  Motivation:  To find out if a $15 tree would do as well as the $30 trees.  We will keep you informed on how well it works out. 

Digging the hole to plant fruit trees in

In the clay, we go both deeper (by 1-2 feet) and wider (2x as wide) than the usual recommendations, as the amended soil in the hole will provide an easier outgrowth for the roots than the virgin clay.  We’ve noticed that between digging and planting the bottom foot of the hole tends to hold water and hypothesized that a deeper hole would give some of the water a place to go without drowning all of the roots.  We also make sure to make the sides of the hole uneven, with shovel cuts into the sides, as we’ve read that those provide avenues that invite root outgrowth.

Breaking up the fill dirt

No dirt goes back in the hole until it’s well broken up.  Roots don’t like air pockets; big hunks of dirt create air pockets.

Choosing fertilizer and compost fill material

We do want to improve the quality of the soil around the tree.  The big box store tree came in a pot, so it has some nice soil with it; but the plan is to improve everything in that big hole.  We give each tree one full bag of composted manure minimum during planting.  To further lighten the clay, we also add in organic fibrous material.  We have in the past sprung for big bags of peat; but then I read that any non-toxic, biodegradable filler would do.  Now we use shredded paper (after checking the business that donated it used non-toxic inks).

Refill the up until it’s time to place the rootball

When we dig the hole, the topsoil is naturally on the bottom of the pile.  The top layer of the dirt pile from the digging is the pure clay of the deeper levels.  When we start refilling the hole with the loose dirt, the very deepest layers (where we don’t expect the roots to get for a while) get some of the clay.  When we move up closer to where the roots will be, the topsoil will be added.  We run out of that by the time we’re all the way to surface level, so it gets clay.  Take that nasty stuff, evil weeds who want to grow up through the mulch!

Place the fruit tree

We put the fruit tree in so the original surface level of the pot, or where the tree emerged from the ground if it’s supplied bare-root, is below what will be the new ground level — maybe six inches lower.  We read it helps support them better.  So far so good; only a couple of our plantings have required staking.  We do take care to keep the trunk straight during hole filling.

Fill around the hole with dirt, compost/manure, and organic fibrous material and water

It’s Lasagna!  Layer of soil that came from the hole, some organic fibrous fill, some compost, wet it down, repeat.  Some times we put in a bit of sand, sometimes not.  No difference observed yet.

Don’t compress, use water to open up the soil

We’ve read that one should tamp down the soil around the roots to get rid of air pockets.  Upon the advice of a man whose job involved keeping happy trees on greenways, we instead use lots of water during planting to help the soil settle and fill any remaining space with water.  It sure feels nicer than stepping around all those tender little side roots; and so far, so good.

Fence to protect against wildlife if necessary

If you’re not sure — it’s probably necessary.  No, we’re not bitter about our wildlife losses.  Well, a little.  Every tree at The Place gets its own fence, because on any given visit we can find fresh deer tracks along the path we mow to be able to get to the trees to tend them.  And when we hadn’t yet learned this trick, the cloven-hoofed cussed beasts ate our first plantings down to sticks.

Good luck!

 

When planning & planting fruit trees, pay attention to pollination

 

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