The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Growing => Fruit => Topic started by: Taliesin on November 18, 2016, 03:25:08 pm
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I am looking for good advice regarding a one acre orchard we are seeking to plant up this Winter. My family and live in West Wales and in May of this year, we bought some land to create an organic smallholding. This will be the first time we have planted apple trees, even though we have grown veg and soft fruit on allotments.
After researching apple varieties suitable to the climate here, we went ahead and purchased around 80 trees, comprising maiden on standard (m25) and half standard rootstock (mm106). These are currently heeled in at a specialist apple nursery awaiting pick up when we are ready.
There are two issues which concern me about the field we have chosen. The planned orchard field slopes to the south east and has good sun and shelter. Now the rainy season has started, I've noticed that the clay soil is wetter than my earlier observations suggested. This is due to compaction created by animal grazing before our time. It's not waterlogged though it is a little squelchy after the rains, and the water is very slow to move through in a few trial holes I dug. A few local farmers suggested mole ploughing and I resisted due to concern about heavy machinery making things worse.
My second concern is that after two soil analysis tests by different labs, I have established that the soil is ph 5.3 and is low in potassium and phosphorous. I am wondering how best to address this.
So my three questions as follows:
1) Can I go ahead and plant this winter in confidence that the trees should be ok? I was going to plant without adding fertiliser in the hole and then mulch around on top with hay, followed by wood chip next year.
2) If I go ahead, how can I best increase the ph, potassium and phosphorous necessary for healthy trees? I've read that lime can scorch freshly planted roots.
3) Or alternatively should I plant on a drier patch, then transplant next Autumn after liming this Autumn? I intend to improve the drainage and fertility through field scale planting of chicory and other green manures?
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Sounds like a typical field round here ..East Carmarthenshire. You need a tree expert which I'm not ......but we have successfully planted 300 trees into the wettest bits of our smallholding ... not fruit trees....but they are growing well.
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that's encouraging, thanks