Hello I want to plant to plant some peach trees (and was possibly thinking of doing this with the pears as well) but our soil is very wet the water table is at times at or above surface level. Most of the time it is about .5-1 ft below the surface level, and during a drought can get as low as 1.5ft. Would raised beds be an option in this situation? I was thinking about using old plastic culvert pipe that is 3 ft in diameter would that be enough room for each tree if i put one per each section of pipe? How high should I go? 1ft? 2ft? I was thinking around 1.5 ft high and burying part of the pipe in the ground for total of 2 ft does this sound good? What about the soil in the pipe? Would just native soil be the best or can I mix some compost in? Half and half? Any modifications to my 10 x 7 spacing with using raised beds? The pears are on P. calleryana the peaches will be on either nemaguard or krymsk 86. Also planning some apples on m111 using this method, if it will work.
Thanks
Macmanmatty
I've had similar thoughts for some of the area where I live, which has standing water on it in the winter. Haven't done anything about it yet, the trees that might got there are still lined out in the backyard at my mom's place! I'd point out first that fruit tree roots usually spread out to about the drip line from the branches, so if you used a 3' diameter culvert as a raised bed you would really be constraining them - and having just this spring finished clearing about 11 acres of ancient plum orchard; I can say that the roots do spread out that far! I'd thought about dumping a large pile of topsoil in a mound where I'd like to plant each tree, to at least give the main roots a chance to be above the water in the winter. I'm also dealing with a clay layer about 14" underneath, which is good enough to make pottery out of.....which was a former local product. But the plums did pretty well despite that, though most of the orchard was up on higher and better drained ground!
Dave
The other possibility is to use rootstock adapted to these conditions.
Malus fusca for apples (there is a thread somewhere on here about this)
Douglas hawthorn for pears (see the recent pear on quince rootstock thread)
I don't know for peaches if there is any equivalent. Another idea would be to make a large mound instead of constraining the roots into a raised bed.
Yes, the pipe may be open; but many of the roots want to be only inches below the surface - most fruit tree roots are very shallow and lateral. So having the pipe be open doesn't do much except to provide a barrier for the roots....unless you have a really big diameter pipe! Other than maybe force them to go under the pipe, then resurface - just what you'd get if you just mounded the soil to raise it. My point was that the roots would likely see the raised bed as being too small, unless you've got really big beds - I've seen photos of apples planted in raised beds, but were large beds and small trees!
Was very educational seeing where the roots actually had grown over the last 60-70 years on the plums and a few seedling apple trees that we cleared; a very large track hoe with a brush claw did the work by plucking the trees out - and most of the roots came with them. Unfortunately, many of the smaller roots are still in the ground and now busy trying to turn back into trees - sprouts of embedded roots are everywhere:( Which isn't so good when we want pasture there now....lots of work for the future.
Dave
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