This is why you mulch your fruit trees!

Where do I buy your t shirt? 😂😂

Does this apply to nut trees as well? Any trees? @davidthegood

awesome video. thanks David. now i know why people make huge circles around trees with mulch and no grass or other plants in that circle

There is another lesson that ties into this lesson that I’m gonna lesson you about…. This lesson 😊

The biggest advantage of a little mulch is that it traps water. Too much mulch and it will attract little bugs that will kill the tree.

Are you sure it was an oak and not sassafras or something? Red and white oak send a deep tap root. I don't see a tap root... maybe not all oaks have this.

That oak fell due to the water table rotting it's roots, they do grow down a little more than that but you are right about the spreading of roots just under the surface. You can feed both the grass and tree at the same time by spreading a small layer of compost over the grass each spring and have both grass and trees.

Yeah the shallowness of those roots😳😳😳 don’t water every day like whoever did that😮😮😮you could tell they watered it on the surface😱😱😱 water never penetrated down😢😢😢 The trick is to get the plant to go through summer without watering to much... and if you don’t have your garden set up right???? you just wasted a bunch of money. Yes mulch mulch mulch and use mulch water!!!!

Thank you for your insight it is so simple and groundbreaking at the same time.

Another lesson...there's a saying about planting things and how they do the following years... First they weep, then the creep, then they leap.

I think it depends on the kind of tree. Fruit trees yes. Maple and Sycamore will grow through the grass. And with maple trees if you fertilize the grass the roots will come up and take over.
I'm looking at fruit trees this fall for planting. I'll be mulching for them. Next spring I want to put strawberry plants under them to double the ground usage.
I'm not in Florida and live in clay soil instead of sand like you. I'll ask my farmer friend what to do about it.

I'm in central FL also. Planted a lemon tree 1 year and a half ago and is struggling to take off. I figured it needed slightly more acidic soil since all peppers and herbs are growing fine.

My mother-in-law planted a fruit tree right in her lawn and the grass was barely 6 inches to a foot away from the trunk. It struggled for 2 years before it died even though it was getting watered. The grass was taking everything from the soil and leaving crumbs for the fruit tree. Thanks for posting

Whenever we plant trees in Florida, we almost always dig a whole 3 to 5 times as wide and 3 to 5 times as deep as the current root ball and fill the entire hole with rich compost and mulch. Then pepper in small amounts of the native soil as we work to fill the hole completely. Most of the native soil ends up in a cone around the base. This way rainstorms will slowly work the native soil back in while the compost and mulch break down over the course of a few years. The trees love it. Long story short, if you're going to plant a tree ANYWHERE just remember that its never going to be truly self-sustaining while it's young. Especially if it isn't a true native of the area.

Morgan Shaw from @GoldShawFarm needs to see this video. He left his orchard trees to be overtaken by grass & weeds and they struggled for years; some died. He wanted to use a forestry technique meant for long-term natural selection of over-planted forest trees. Trees grow differently in open sun or orchard versus a forest. In an orchard, you're trying to give the best chance possible to everything you plant, while collecting seeds from the best growing trees of the same species. In a forest, you take down struggling & dying trees to allow healthier nearby trees to get bigger.

👍👍

Something else you may want to discuss next are proper planting techniques. A majority of trees coming from nurseries and stores are pot-bound with their root flares buried by additional substrate. Step 1 and 2 of planting any tree should be finding the root flare and then dealing with the encircling roots that will start to girdle and choke the tree as it continues to grow.

Mulch helps retain moisture and moderated temperature. But trees need at least two years to establish and work on their roots after planting. It’s not surprising that the fruit trees you planted didn’t just immediately grow.

Trees root system is different from one tree to another. Some trees have shallow feeding roots and some like to go deep in the ground. The example you saw of the disk shaped root is due to the heavy clay soil the tree is in. If you have sandy loam soil, the tree root system will go deep for sure. Also, any tree you plant will take off in the third year. The First Year, Plants Sleep, Second Year, They Creep & Third Year, They Leap!

My problem is having enough mulch. 200 seedlings this year and enough mulch for maybe 30. :D

Mycorrhizal fungi my guy

David, have you tried out these "fruit tree guilds" and had any success with them? Or would they too compete heavily for the trees resources?

Mulch and fallen logs/wood are essential for tree growth and overall long term health. A big mistake most make when applying mulch is creating the “volcano effect” by stacking the mulch all around the base of the tree so it hills up to the base, similar to the appearance of a volcano. This will seriously hurt your tree, if not killing it and highly advise applying mulch at ground level and no more than 2-3 inches at most. Then you should consider planting companion trees, bushes and flowers, ferns that can go under it to create a forest like setting to help improve the soil health. Subsequently reducing your overall lawn to be mown and providing habitat to some of our pollinators and other wildlife assuming you’re planting native species.

LOL Live Laugh Compost your enemies

Wouldn't make sense to plant other things at the base, like White Clover or something that brings in nutrients? Most mulches seem to pull nitrogen, but the clover would give it to the soil.
I guess this is more of a question.. anyone know why not a beneficial ground cover instead of mulch?

I have never had a problem....but then again I have a unique process for growing trees.

I dig out 2-3 feet of ground where i want my tree.

I planted cold hearty pomegrantes this year. Each tree is spaced 12 feet apart. I dug 10 foot around every tree 3 feet deep. In this I added zoo poo (get it for free from a local zoo), mixed with a loamy compost (local transfer station for free), and sawdust from the local lumber company (free and is pure untreated wood sawdust). I then add wood ash from the wood stove and mix this in equal parts to fill the holes. I mulch over the top of holes. I then go looking for mushrooms....dont need to be edible. I pick them and leave them amongst the mulch and water heavily.

When I see mycelium growth I know its ready.

I then plant my trees and water heavily.

I usually do these tree patches a year in advance. It lets all the fungi to multiply.

I hit an old rock wall foundation from a house that was built in the 1600s. A cottonwood grew from that whoopsie....and after the first year it started putting out seeds....some of those seeds have inundated my tree patches.

These cottonwoods grow 8 feet in a year in these patches or more. So I must be doing something right with my tree patches😂.

Lot of work but it is worth it.

Different trees need to be treated differently. Some are going to have a vital taproot which is almost the opposite of what you describe. Hickorys for instance have a taproot that is several times deeper than the tree height when they're young which makes them difficult to transplant, but it also means they have almost no "pancake" root structure. Others may have a non-vital taproot like most pines. Important when they're young but increasingly non-vital as they age.

mowing your lawn is the culprit here.

You need to throw some Pennsylvania dirt in with those trees! The big oaks dislike the sand, when they blow over in the greenwood, you get a giant mound of dirt with a pond under it which it feeds from and grows for a few years sideways.

Oak trees always fall, the wood is so stiff it won't flex and it pries the roots out of the ground.

Sounds to me like the old rule of sleep, creep, and leap.

Lucerne mulch will bring in fungus under heavy rain conditions, don't mulch in contact with your tree and NEVER plant a tree deeper than the original soil level as both these thing could cause collar rot

Im thinking about putting some oyster mushrooms in mg mulch. Extra food and mycelium. Idk what it'll benefit specifically, but couldnt hurt

your trees were building root systems for 2 years

In yards where large mulch rings around trees may be undesirable for some, you can replicate the forest soil environment by applying mycorrhizal fungi and tree-specific fertilizer through deep root applications each year. This approach prevents the tree roots from competing with grass roots and helps avoid the appearance of unsightly surface roots in your yard.

I’m sold!

Use some fabacea as living mulch. They keep the nitrogen in the upper soil and they'll help the bees with flowring. It's a win-win.

Oh my goodness! That’s why new tree starters always have mulch around them with a support cage. I had no idea it helped the tree grow so much.

What about the oak Savannah habitat? Perhaps white oak and bur oak are built differently.

Hello. Could you tell me what the mulch you are using is called? Is it shredded pine bark mulch or something similar?

How do you know it was the mulch and not some other factor?
I mean, that's what everyone says, and it sounds reasonable, but
how do you know those trees would not have done the same thing
without the mulch?

Transplant shock

While the mulch advice is good, those trees weren't necessarily responding to the mulch: They had recovered from transplant shock, which will often take a couple of years.

Mulching is a good idea, but the first year or two after you plant a tree they spend most of their energy growing roots, so you see less above ground growth. Correlation is not causation.

It's still surprizing that the oak tree did not have a taproot, though. Maybe it's the subspecies or this particular individual's location that prevented it.

It's been uprooted like a black spruce.

Uh... Depends on the tree type. Oak tends to grow roots downwards very aggressively, they do not have a lot of surface roots.

So it really dependso n the type of tree. It also helps that the tree isn't placed on a soggy soil, because they will not willingly root into water sogged soil. And Mulching can in fact... trap more moisture and encourage surface root growth.

The reason you want to mulch in a wider area is more because you have a single tree of that type, therefore you need to establish a wider nutrient area so it grows evenly and have more nutrients over time as it dissolves into the soil. Trees absorb what the bacteria breaks down. A thriving soil is a thriving tree. What you are feeding, isn't the tree, but the bacteria that lives in symbiosis with it.

There is also the fact that trees of the same type, can exchange resources. So if one tree live in more moist area, while another lives in a more nutrient dense, they can exchange resources if their roots interconnect.

Not to mention, Anchor roots don't really absorb nutrients. It is the small, fibrous roots that absorb nutrients. Anchor roots are useless to the tree's growth. They are more there, to try keep it from tipping over.

Age of the tree accounts into some of that as well. Some trees don't actually explode until their 3-5 years

Mmmm nice. No wonder my Lilly pillies are stunted in the front lawn