Hello friends of HOS,
My name is Michelle, and I am the Community Orchard Coordinator for a non-profit called Green Lents. We are trying to source soil amendments and fertilizer for our young food forest! The fruit trees we have include apples, pears, asian pears, kiwis and cherries. Other berries / fruit-bearing plants include raspberries, grapes, blueberries, strawberries, goumi berries, and currants. Native plants abound.
Does anyone have any suggestions about which type of fertilizer would be best for our young community orchard?
Thanks,
Michelle
The only fertilizers I use are black oil sunflower and thistle seed (I will explain), compost tea, and guild plants such as vetch and comfrey.
The bird seed attracts wild birds and rabbits, which spend hours and hours scratching around in the leaf litter, eating seeds and hopefully any codling moth larvae that they find. The rabbits eat most of the grass and small tender plants. They both also leave behind "organic fertilizer" :-).
I "spray" compost tea when the tree has leaves. I don't use a sprayer, I just fling the liquid into the air from a bucket, using a technique I have developed over the years.
The guild plants capture nitrogen from the air and nutrients from deep in the soil.
I have never used chemical fertilizers or sprays so I cannot say how my methods compare with those in terms of yield etc. But I do have to thin the fruit to keep the branches from sagging all the way to the ground when they are full of fruit, so I must be doing something right.
I'm very much like Dave M in terms of fertilizer, except I spray the compost tea and urinate on my trees to give them nitrogen. I know, easier for a male. Adding wood chips will set into motion the microbes that create nutrient dense soils that give your trees balanced nutrition without vulnerability to diseases.
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